LONDON, Sep 1 (Reuters/EP) -
IBM on Wednesday announced a deal to buy British security analytics software firm i2 for an undisclosed sum, continuing its policy of acquiring companies that can help its clients deal with growing amounts of information.
The privately held company i2, which claims its software helped U.S. forces defeat former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in 2003, is headquartered in the university city of Cambridge and has 350 employees in Britain, the United States, Canada and Australia.
In five years, IBM has invested more than $14 billion in 25 acquisitions focused on analytics firms to help its clients handle growing amounts of unstructured data from social media, biometrics and criminal database databases.
These big data volumes present an increasingly urgent challenge for companies across all sectors, and have been a major driver of mergers and acquisitions between tech companies in recent years.
Like Autonomy, another Cambridge firm that Hewlett-Packard agreed to buy earlier this month for $11.7 billion, i2 has cutting-edge technology in analyzing immense amounts of data intercepted by law enforcement and intelligence agencies. The deal is expected to be closed in the fourth quarter.
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