The year may be coming to a close, but IBM keeps the acquisitions coming with this week's purchase of risk management specialist Consul.

IBM said the acquisition of privately held Consul would strengthen its service management initiative by adding capabilities in data governance, compliance monitoring, auditing, and reporting in mainframe and distributed environments.

The deal is intended to help IBM assist customers in creating infrastructures serving Sarbanes-Oxley and HIPPA. Dutch-based Consul's trick is to consolidate and analyse data such as user activity and security logs, and to deliver alerts on who's using information. Consul will be folded into IBM's Tivoli software management unit.

Aside from improving IBM's risk management and compliance capabilities, the deal also delivers IBM a customer list of 350 organisations, spanning Ford, Kroger, Office Depot, Hanes, and Fidelity Bank. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. ®