By William Fellows
Dascom Inc CEO Jim Curtin told ComputerWire that the acquisition of his company by IBM Corp on Wednesday was pretty inevitable, given how close they’d become over the two and a half years they have been working together. When chairman Louis Gerstner said he’d like to change the name of the company to Internet Business Machines earlier this year, Curtin said he knew for sure where he wanted the Dascom to end up. The deal itself was a few months in the making. IBM OEMs the enterprise security software company’s IntraVerse software as part of its SecureWay Policy Director and SecureWay FirstSecure suite. And Dascom has been working with IBM’s mainframe people but the software has yet to roll out on those platforms.
Dascom’s 100 staff will report to Jeffrey Jaffe, general manager of the SecureWay division. Curtin becomes VP strategy and development. Curtin says he hopes to be able to continue with as much of the non-IBM work Dascom does as possible, but it’s not yet clear what third party support will go forwards. The technology will now be leveraged across IBM’s entire suite of WebSphere software including Net.commerce and Net.payment.
