-added contribution from Sandip Kale and Mitul Mehta

Let’s probe behind yesterday’s announcement that IBM is acquiring Intelliden, a privately-owned technology company based in Menlo Park.
Before we look at the technology, what about the market presence of IBM’s latest conquest? It has an interesting European dimension that is not typical of the usual Californian high-tech outfit. Its CEO, Alan Black, was previously managing director of Openwave Systems’s EMEA operations in Belfast. Alan McKee, head of engineering, comes from BT and Nortel EMEA, both based in Belfast where, no doubt, he and Black met. It is clearly a fortuitous combination as Intelliden’s key customers include Telecom Italia and Telefonica.
A Brownfield Network, just like a brownfield site in the construction industry, is one that has been built on before. It is composed of legacy. This means it could well be large, many hands have been involved in its creation and support, it has different technologies and poor documentation. In management terms too often the cry is ‘Fix the problem’. It should be, of course, ‘Solve the problem’ but that would take time and effort that may not be available when an emergency arises.
Imposed on this unstructured network are the regulatory compliance, operational compliance, security demands and audit. Even these processes are less than satisfactory in the Brownfield scenario. Today’s compliance calls may be irrelevant to yesterday’ equipment. An audit procedure may not match the syntax that has developed over time. Remember that these procedures for most network service management suppliers, rely on the command line interface (CLI) specification. Yet some of these can comprise half a million lines!
Intelliden has taken a new approach by developing a model based on XML it calls SmartModel. This is where IBM’s decision to acquire the company shows great shrewdness. Not only is the technology smart, it nicely complements IBM’s own skills in Tivoli.
Intelliden technology will be integrated into IBM Tivoli Software. As Intelliden provides network change and configuration management solutions by automating the management of thousands of network devices, Tivoli will enable its deployment and integration across organizational boundaries.
Intelliden pokes around in the innards of your network and sorts it out while Tivoli oversees it by providing the visibility, control and automation.
Looks a good combination.
Overall, this acquisition is of enormous significance to IBM. It is very strategic in nature and brings the above stated strengths to the Tivoli offerings. Additionally It also positions IBM well to compete with HP and Cisco who have made sizable inroads into the Service Provider space. Looking forward, the full portfolio from Intelliden enhances both the IBM stack, its ecosystem and its segment positioning leverage. The Intelliden client base also helps!