In a move aimed at beefing up its Rational tools division, IBM announced on Tuesday that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Systemcorp ALG Ltd., a Montreal-based project portfolio management software company.

The companies did not disclose terms of the deal, although the acquisition is expected to be completed within 30 days and Systemcorp's products are expected to be available from IBM about 30 days after completion of the deal.

IBM's Steve Mills speaks out about the integration of Rational into IBM. Read the interview.

IBM officials said Rational will integrate the Systemcorp software into the IBM Software Development Platform, the company's suite of tools for building enterprise applications. Systemcorp produces PMOffice, a Web-based project management product for tracking project deliverables from start to finish.

In addition, IBM said its IBM Global Services division will make use of the technology as well as help to tailor it for use in the IBM tool set.

This article was first published on eweek.com.