Woah! Government Technology reports that IBM is buying PureEdge, the producer of the e‑forms software that’s used by Grants.gov,
among many others. I think this has been in the works for a while now,
given that PureEdge seems to have obtained quite a foothold in the
government marketplace, with significant agreements with HHS and the
Army. We’re quite familiar with the technology, having used it in our
work with Grants.gov. I’ve heard a number of complaints about that
system’s use of PureEdge, not least being “There’s no Mac version,”
which is a major bone of contention among research scientists in
particular. With IBM’s money behind them now, maybe that long-awaited
problem might be solved.

Meanwhile, there’s an interesting take on this news at PDFzone.com, with a predictable too-early-to-be-credible Adobe favoritism, which discusses how IBM’s strategy may be to compete with Adobe and Microsoft (InfoPath) by offering a tightly-integrated front- and back-end solution that leverages their appserver assets.