I am getting word if more and more coverage on these announcements that IBM made on Thursday. Here are a few excerpts from new stories:

Investor's Business Daily: "It's an extremely ambitious strategy but also one that plays well to some of the company's fundamental strengths," said analyst Charles King, of research firm Pund-IT, whose clients include IBM. It "does very well at developing end-to-end solutions and its view of enterprise IT is quite sweeping in comparison to some of its competitors."

eWEEK: "We've been seeing the security market itself lurch form headline to headline, and customers in particular need to stop thinking about their strategy in terms of the latest crisis," said Lovejoy. "We're trying to elevate risk management above other security conversation; starting with PCI fits that mold well, because it dovetails with this concept of starting with a risk management plan."

Investor's Business Daily: "The more we engage with our clients, the more it becomes clear that security as it has been until now is broken," said Val Rahmani, general manager of infrastructure management services for IBM Global Technology Services. "Many clients have 32 different vendors doing security for them. Who can manage 32 different vendors doing related aspects of the same thing?"

InfoWorld: "[IBM is] in a position that few others in IT can match or challenge when it comes to having a fairly complete story across multiple aspects of enterprise IT and systems integration—but security had long been an obvious gap in that story," said Scott Crawford, an analyst with Enterprise Management Associates. "What they are pushing towards with this announcement is a strategy that takes a more comprehensive approach to security across multiple fronts. With the rise of focus on a more strategic approach to GRC, I would expect more vendors to take a more strategic approach to the IT security and risk management market," he continued. "This is an example of a company that can take on such an initiative with more credibility than many."

And we also have some video and radio coverage:

• Bloomberg
  
• NBC (18 Clips)
• ABC (14 Clips)
• WCBS (radio):
• Clip 1
• Clip 2
• Clip 3
• Clip 4
• Clip 5
  

• NYTimes.com - IBM Plans Major Security Initiative
• Bloomberg - IBM Plans to Spend $1.5B to Help Customers Secure Data
• ZDNet - IBM touts enterprises free of fear and $1.5B security spend
• SearchSecurity.com - IBM to boost security spending, push PCI DSS program
• Internetnews.com - IBM: Security Is Our Brand
• HardOCP - IBM Announces End-to-End Solution for PCI Compliance

Just to name a few...  So, yeah, I've been busy.  I am now working on both Tivoli Security Operations Manager (TSOM) and Tivoli Compliance Insight Manager (TCIM).  These products work very well together in what is dubbed "The IBM SIEM Solution".  The articles above speak of Tivoli and Watchfire (part of the Rational brand) in Software Group and ISS in Global Technology Services.  So the $1.5B will be spread around a bit.

The comforting thing is that IBM is making a significant investment into allowing it's recent acquisitions (Consul, Micromuse, ISS, Watchfire) work together to meet the customer's needs.  No longer will people doubt me when I say "I'm a security guy" and "I work for IBM" together.

Here's the official press releases:

• IBM Acts to Transform Risk Management for Businesses
• IBM Announces Industry's First End-to-End Solution for PCI Compliance
• IBM Positioned in Analyst Firm's Leaders Quadrant for Web Access Management