Admittedly, I’d never heard of MRO Software until this announcement.  They make an asset and service management system and have a decent client list.  IBM intends to roll this into Tivoli.  I am philosophically in favor of IBM buying capabilities and a foothold in the market… particularly when it can be done on the cheap (not to say this was… time will tell).  The Maximo Enterprise Suite, MRO’s flagship product, integrates pretty well with a number of ERPs and is considered by the analyst quoted in Ecommerce Times to be best of breed in that space. Greg Osuri of soa-blog.com echoed the positive sentiment, stating that the purchase “would change the critics’ thinking on IBM’s seriousness in their SOA practice”.