IBM Snaps Up Resource Accounting Vendor CIMS Lab

Today IBM disclosed it has purchased privately-undisclosed CIMS Lab, Inc. for an undisclosed amount. CIMS Lab produces software enterprises can use to monitor the usage of servers, storage, email, networks, databases, applications, and operating systems across virtualized environments. The software collects raw data about IT resource usage and translates into financial data businesses can use to analyze costs and accurately estimate future capacity requirement.

CIMS Lab’s resource accounting software will broaden IBM’s enterprise management portfolio to include financial management. IBM says the software it is acquiring will complement its management portfolio for virtualized environments. Effectively managing these environments will help enterprises get the most out of virtualization which aims to simplify IT management and lower infrastructure costs. CIMS Lab has over 170 enterprise customers in a number of industries including financial services, government, and healthcare.

The acquired CIMS Lab’s software’s resource usage data can be used to charge back individual departments or subsidiaries for IT resource usage. Enterprises can also use CIM Labs’ software to monitor and charge for IT usage when deploying a Services Oriented Architecture (SOA) across an open IT infrastructure.

IBM will integrate CIMS Lab’s operations into its IBM Tivoli division. The CIMS Lab software will be incorporated into IBM Tivoli software products as part of an accounting and chargeback offering. IBM also plans to ship CIMS Lab with IBM Director.