IBM’s latest acquisition isn’t in the analytics space where most of its recent activity has been (see here) but is still in the cloud space which is another of its target areas. The newest purchase is of privately-held Green Hat (which has joint HQ’s in the UK and US) and provides cloud-based software quality and testing tools.
Basically, Green Hat’s offerings allows developers to test their projects in the cloud, saving them the considerable cost and effort involved in setting up their own in-house test and simulation environments. Green Hat will join IBM’s Rational software group. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed; it is expected to close by the end of January.
The higher profile and greater resources that will be available to Green Hat as part of IBM is good news for the company but could put pressure on the testing part of UK-based NCC Group. Although NCC’s testing business is performing in line with expectations, it has experienced squeezed margins, and staff attrition (see Some positive early signs from NCC).