Having cut a deal with ILOG’s board, IBM is going to tender for the French company in both France and the US offering roughly $340 million cash (215 million euros), something like a 37% premium over its price last Friday, 56% if you consider the whole month before that.

IBM’s already gotten tender commitments representing 10% of the stock but it will wait for gets antitrust clearance. The tenders should happen sometime after mid-September.

The French concern is seeking shelter from the economic storm that has badly impacted on the financial sector where it does a lot of its business.

Concomitant with IBM’s announcement it said that its earnings had plunged from $4.9 million to $500,000 on revenues of $181 million, up from $161.5 million, in the year ending June 30.

“In the fourth quarter, we faced a challenging economic environment, notably in the financial sector, which remains a key source of revenues for ILOG,” Reuters quoted it as saying.

IBM says it will combine its business process management (BPM), business optimization, and Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) technologies – including WebSphere – with ILOG’s business rules management software. It said the move will let it deliver critical business information in real-time, so customers can make better business decisions faster.

IBM said ILOG technology has the potential to add significant capability across IBM’s entire software platform and bolster its existing rules management offerings. This includes improved rules and business optimization capabilities for information management offerings, better visualization for Lotus products, enhanced optimization within Tivoli solutions, and efficient supply chain management assets for planning and scheduling.

IBM has partnered with ILOG for the last decade.

Beyond 2,500 corporate end users, ILOG has more than 500 OEM, solution integrator, and ISV partners. It was founded in 1987 and employs roughly 850 people worldwide.