South San Francisco-based Actuate is joining IBM’s Advantage for Industries partner program to promote and incorporate its enterprise reporting and data analysis suite as part of IBM’s financial services solution blueprints.

The combination of technologies is being aimed at financial services firms seeking to layer reporting and analysis capabilities on top of their service-oriented architectures (SOAs).

Actuate will also gear its software to run on IBM’s eServer, pSeries and xSeries platforms and align its products closely to IBM’s middleware suite including WebSphere, Lotus, Tivoli and Rational.

Specifically, Actuate becomes an IBM Financial Services Cluster Partner. Both companies will engage in joint marketing, selling and implementation.

IBM’s Advantage for Industries initiative is an offshoot of a similar Advantage program that IBM has set up for SMBs. These programs provide technical and marketing support for ISVs building vertical and horizontal applications around IBM’s technology infrastructure.

The partnership underscores a long-standing relationship between the two companies, which has recently focused on financial services.

In January this year Actuate announced it had joined IBM’s Banking Cluster ISV Partner program to provide online reporting and analysis capabilities for IBM’s Front Office Banking Practice. Actuate claims it is the only reporting partner that IBM has appointed in this capacity.

Four of the top five US-based global banks use Actuate’s software for front-office reporting and analysis applications.