IBM Completes Acquisition of Vallent

IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced it has completed its acquisition of Vallent Corporation, a privately held software company based in Bellevue, Washington with more than 400 employees. IBM announced a definitive agreement to acquire Vallent on November 28, 2006. Vallent's operations will be integrated into the IBM Software Group's Tivoli Software unit.

Vallent's software helps service providers manage the performance of their network infrastructure through monitoring and reporting problem areas such as dropped telephone calls and traffic bottlenecks. The software also helps service providers improve service quality and identify network problems before they impact a customer's experience. Vallent adds significant wireless telecommunications expertise and technology to IBM.

Vallent has more than 200 clients, including Bharti, China Mobile and Brasil Telecom, as well as equipment providers such as Alcatel-Lucent and Motorola.

"Since we are a customer of both Vallent and IBM, the acquisition aligns well with our OSS strategy," said Sasho Mitov, Operations and Maintenance Division Director of Mobiltel. "We look forward to expanding our business relationship and supporting our rapid roll-out of high quality services."

The acquisition of Vallent extends IBM Service Management capabilities including the Netcool operations support system portfolio acquired with Micromuse in February of 2006. With Vallent technology, IBM can now offer distinctive capabilities across wireline, wireless, IP, and IT infrastructure to help clients manage services end-to-end, from the content server to the handset. Vallent further extends IBM's ability to help service providers address emerging opportunities in next generation network transformation, fixed/mobile convergence, and IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) deployment.

For more information, go to http://www-306.ibm.com/software/tivoli/welcome/vallent/