IBM today announced it has acquired Daeja Image Systems Ltd., a leading provider of software that makes it easier for business and IT professionals to view large documents and images. Daeja is a privately held software company with headquarters in Milton Keynes, UK. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

As unstructured business data continues to grow exponentially, business users need not only access to information, but a compelling user experience as well. By putting content in the context of how people work every day, professionals can solve problems and make decisions that deliver better outcomes, faster.

Daeja delivers software that helps line of business employees across all industries, especially data intensive ones such as banking, insurance and healthcare, get faster access to critical business information. Users can open and view hundreds of document and image file formats, even if the native application is not present on their devices, which saves time and enables social collaboration and document sharing across the organization.

"IBM is continuing to lead the way in helping organizations access the content they rely upon for everyday operations," said IBM Enterprise Content Management Business Leader Doug Hunt. "The acquisition of Daeja will simplify how business data is viewed by department or line-of-business users."

The interactive features of Daeja software complement IBM's ability to mask and annotate documents and images to anonymize or protect sensitive data. A financial analyst, for instance, can distribute a spreadsheet for review by senior management. Reviewers can view the file and add comments as annotations before sending it back for further analysis. Meanwhile, Daeja software provides control over who can see and modify the document, providing security and privacy though out the process.

Daeja technology makes it easy to view very large files. An insurance agent, for example, can view car accident photos and images off-site to speed up the claims review process. Or a physician can review a patient's detailed charts or x-rays for more timely diagnosis and treatment.

"As a longtime business partner, Daeja has integrated its solutions with IBM solutions for more than a decade," said Stu Moss, CEO at Daeja. "With our combined strengths, we can help clients manage their data challenges and directly enhance IBM's key market initiatives for big data, mobile, and content management."

Today's news complements IBM's big data capabilities to help organizations find insights in new and emerging types of data and content to be more agile and competitive. The combination of IBM and Daeja aims to provide clients with instant access to this critical data so they can work more productively anytime, anywhere.

Through partnering with IBM and other companies, Daeja technology is used by more than 4,000 clients across a variety of industries to help access, manage and view their data.

IBM intends to incorporate Daeja into its Software Group and its Enterprise Content Management (ECM) business. According to a leading analyst firm, IBM is the ECM market share leader, growing twice as fast as the market as a whole, and extending its lead over that of its closest competitors.