IBM has agreed to acquire XIV, a privately-held developer of software to run large enterprise storage systems.

XIV's flagship Nextra platform allows multiple storage devices and applications to be managed under a single system.

The company estimates that Nextra systems are responsible for managing more than four petabytes of data worldwide.

XIV will become part of IBM's Storage Systems and Technology Group when the acquisition is complete. It is the first acquisition made by the group in almost 10 years.

Big Blue plans to use Nextra as the basis for many of its future enterprise storage offerings.

The technology should allow IBM to offer storage systems that can be easily expanded to accommodate web 2.0 services and digital archives that require constant extra capacity.

"The ability for almost anyone to create digital content at any time has accelerated the need for new ways of applying infrastructure solutions to the world of digital information," said Andy Monshaw, general manager of IBM's system storage branch.

"IBM's goal is to provide the leading technologies and solutions at every layer of the data centre."

XIV was founded in 2002 and is based in Tel Aviv. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.