IBM making another acquistion, to buy FileNet for $1.6 billion

Arthur

International Business Machines (IBM : International Business Machines

IBM75.74, +0.35, +0.5%) Thursday agreed to acquire FileNet Corp. (FILE : FileNet Corporation,FILE36.17, +1.52, +4.4%) for $1.6 billion, or $35 per share. IBM, a Dow component, expects to close the transaction in the fourth quarter. Shares of FileNet, a Costa Mesa, Calif., provider of business process and content management software applications, closed Wednesday at $34.65, up 25 cents, while IBM's stock finished at $75.39, rising 6 cents…

Filenet Corporation was incorporated in Delaware on July 30, 1982. It is headquartered in Costa Mesa, California and operates globally in more than 90 countries through its own global sales, professional services and support organizations, as well as through ValueNet Partner network of resellers, system integrators and application developers. The Company develops markets, sells and supports a software platform and application development framework for Enterprise Content Management and Business Process Management called FileNet P8. Enterprise Content Management refers to the range of functions used by organizations, including businesses and governmental agencies, to access and manage all forms of content, streamline and automate business processes, and automate records management to help meet compliance needs. The Company's software provides a reliable, scalable and highly available enterprise platform that enables companies to capture, store, manage, secure and process information to increase operational efficiency and lower total cost of ownership. It automates the management and processing of all forms of content including Web pages, word processing documents, spreadsheets, HTML, XML, PDF, document images, email messages, digital content and other electronic content. Filenet's Business Process Management software controls the flow of work throughout a business by streamlining, automating and optimizing business processes. BPM refers to the automation of processing, communicating and gathering information within the organization and from third parties in order to make appropriate decisions during a business transaction, such as processing payments or applications for services or products. Filenet's technology strategy is focused on platform capabilities and feature improvements to enhance its customers' ability to configure, design, build and deploy a variety of ECM and BPM solutions in order to meet a range of content management and business process management needs within a single scalable platform. Its customers include many of the Global 2000 organizations and are typically those enterprises and government agencies that have complex business processes that capture, manage, store and share large volumes of electronic content. The industry in which Company competes faces rapid technological developments, evolving industry standards, changes in customer requirements and competitive new products and features. As a result, its success, in part, depends on the ability to continue to cost effectively enhance its existing products in a timely manner and to develop and introduce new products that meet customer needs while reducing total cost of ownership. FileNet and ValueNet are registered trademarks of FileNet. WorkFlo Services, OSAR, Watermark, Panagon, Acenza, Brightspire, Document Warehouse, and FileNet Workgroup also are trademarks or registered trademarks of FileNet Corporation. As of December 31, 2005, FileNet Corporation has one issued U.S. patent that expires in 2017, twelve pending U.S. patent applications, and two pending foreign patent applications. As of December 31, 2005, the Company had 1,695 full-time employees.