Expects to combine the technology and expertise of UMT with its existing Microsoft Office Enterprise Project Management solution.

Microsoft Corp. today announced the intent to acquire software and IP assets from UMT, a project and portfolio management software and consulting firm that helps companies manage and optimize project, application, product and process portfolios.

Microsoft expects to combine the technology and expertise of UMT with its existing Microsoft Office Enterprise Project Management solution based on Microsoft Office Project Professional 2003 and Microsoft Office Project Server 2003.

Terms of the acquisition were not announced. UMT will maintain all current operations until the transaction closes. Following the acquisition, some members of the UMT executive team and a number of UMT product development employees are expected to join the Microsoft Office Project team. The consulting arm of UMT will remain a separate entity and become the UMT Consulting Group to help provide successful implementations of the Microsoft portfolio management software platform.

"UMT founders Mike Gruia, Yorai Linenberg and I share Microsoft's vision of bringing enterprise project and portfolio management together, and have built the UMT business on innovating to meet customers' portfolio management needs," said Gil Makleff, CEO North America at UMT. "We look forward to working with Microsoft to develop solutions that help customers better manage their project portfolios and accelerate their business success."

"With UMT's technology and portfolio framework, we will extend the Office EPM Solution to offer an end-to-end enterprise project and portfolio management solution," said Chris Capossela, Corporate Vice President of the Information Worker Product Management Group at Microsoft. "Through the acquisition, we will be able to more quickly deliver on our vision of bringing project and portfolio management capabilities to all levels of an organization."