IBM acquires software testing automator Green Hat, with joint headquarters in the UK and Wilmington

Tom Paine


IBM announced last week it had closed on the acquisition of Green Hat, which it announced a week earlier. It is the first acquisition under new IBM CEO Ginni Rometty. IBM says Green Hat has joint headquarters in London and Wilmington. Its Delaware presence grew out of its acquisition of Solstice Software in 2008.

Green Hat, which was founded in 1996, helps customers automate aspects of software testing and quality control by enabling developers to conduct testing in a virtual environment rather than having to build out physical testing labs. Green Hat makes testing solutions for complex, often service oriented systems relying on the Cloud, Web Services, messaging, SOA (Service Oriented Architecture), ESB (Enterprise Service Bus), BPM (Business Process Management), CEP (Complex Event Processing), and SAP.

Green Hat will operate as part of IBM's Rational Software business; it was already a Rational business partner. The company has 45 employees, the majority of which are in the UK, but the IBM acquisition certainly could increase the possibility of more growth in Delaware. Terms have not been disclosed. IBM says it intends to maintain Green Hat's broad focus rather than making it a more narrow tool for its own proprietary products.

Solstice, which also was founded in 1996 as Class IQ , received an investment of $3.8 million in 2003
from Core Capital Partners and Anthem Capital Management.



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