IBM's acquisition machine has swallowed another victim with software maker Cyanea now set to join Big Blue's fold.

IBM plans to take Cyanea's products for improving the performance of business software and bundle them with its Tivoli systems management software line. This deal marks the seventeenth software acquisition IBM has made since 2001 and follows right behind the purchase of analytics software-maker Alpahblox. IBM did not announce a close date or financial terms for the Cyanea acquisition.

Cyanea has an impressive customer list, including CSC, Commerce Bank, John Deere and Deutsche Telekom. Its software is most highly touted as a performance enhancer for Java (J2EE) applications. Software written in CICS and IMS is also supported, which is important to IBM, as it plans to offer the Cyanea products for its mainframe systems.

Cyanea's software also runs on a wide range of platforms, including AIX, z/OS, OS/390, Linux, HP-UX, Windows 2000 and Solaris. There is more on the company's products here.

IBM is touting the Cyanea software as a way of improving transaction performance on its mainframes, providing troubleshooting tools for WebSphere and conducting performance analysis for Rational software.

IBM is not alone in the software acquisition game. Over the past two years, HP, EMC, Sun Microsystems and Veritas have all scooped up as many ISVs as possible. And, while it's encouraging to see the vendors improving their middleware in this manner, you have to believe the cost of these acquisitions will be returned to customers in some way, shape or form. ®

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