IBM is buying HPC pioneer Platform Computing for its cluster, grid and cloud management software.

Terms were not disclosed. The privately held Canadian company, now almost 20 years old, is thought to have revenues of around $70 million-a-year. It claims 2,000 customers including 23 of the Global 30.

IBM said it considered the acquisition "a strategic element for the transformation of HPC into the high-growth segment of technical computing and an important part of our smarter computing strategy." It figures the widgetry can be leveraged across IBM and paired with its Big Data analytics capabilities.

IBM used IDC's estimate to fix the combined opportunity for servers, storage and systems software for technical computing at over $14 billion this year, a number expected to grow over 8% a year to $18.5 billion by 2014.

IBM figures Platform Computing's software will help it sell more System x, BladeCenter, Power systems and storage, along with Tivoli and WebSphere software.

The deal should close in the fourth quarter when Platform Computing's operations and its 500 employees will be integrated into IBM's Systems and Technology Group.

Platform Computing has existing relationships with Cray, Dell, HP, Microsoft and Red Hat and a finger in Hadoop.