Features - Financial Plays Of The Week:

IBM ACQUIRES TrelliSoft

IBM announced that it has acquired TrelliSoft Inc, a privately-held provider of storage resource management software based in Glen Ellyn, Illinois. Financial details were not disclosed.

IBM acquired TrelliSoft to help meet a growing customer need to manage costs associated with the proliferation of data storage and increase storage resource availability. TrelliSoft will be integrated immediately into IBM Software Group and TrelliSoft products are available today from IBM Tivoli Software.

Storage resource management (SRM) serves as the dashboard for the storage environment by providing a set of automated tools that address multiple aspects of the storage infrastructure including capacity, availability, event, performance and asset management. TrelliSoft specializes in Java and Web-based storage resource management to support multiple platforms including Windows NT, Windows 2000, HP-UX, Solaris, AIX, Red Hat Linux and others.

The Trellisoft SRM solution will complement SRM products currently under development at IBM. IBM offers the most comprehensive storage solutions known in the industry including storage hardware, software and services.

"Our customers have asked us to help manage their storage the way we've enabled them to manage their systems," said Robert LeBlanc, general manager, IBM Tivoli Software. "With this acquisition, we will accelerate our ability to deliver a high-quality product that meets our customers' needs for storage management. This enables customers to more effectively and efficiently manage their storage resources, and, as a result, improve their return on investment."

"Customers and partners will see a significant benefit to their businesses with the addition of IBM's development and distribution strength," said Stephen Donovan, CEO of TrelliSoft. "TrelliSoft software can now deliver additional value as it integrates with IBM Tivoli's suite of policy-driven storage management software."

About Tivoli Software from IBM

Tivoli software from IBM helps enable an IT organization to reduce the total cost of ownership and improve service levels of the IT infrastructure. Tivoli systems management software helps traditional enterprises and e-businesses worldwide manage security, storage, performance and availability, and configuration and operations. Backed by world-class IBM services, support and research, Tivoli software is one of four key IBM Software Group brands -- DB2, Lotus, Tivoli and WebSphere. For more information, visit www.tivoli.com.

Contact: IBM Tivoli, John D. Crowe, 512-286-3182, crowejd@us.ibm.com.