World Business Briefing: Britain: Software Publisher Makes Acquisition
12858
The Atex Group, a British maker of publishing software, agreed to buy the Unisys CorporationÂs media unit, another publisher of software, for undisclosed terms. Atex, based in Reading, England, raised more than $50 million for the purchase and for the costs of integrating the businesses. The media unit makes software that helps publishers manage production tasks and news agency reports. The acquisition may increase AtexÂs newspaper clients by almost half. Unisys, based in Blue Bell, Pa., is selling the unit to focus on computers and consulting services.
688967
Sun Microsystems' purchase of MySQL for $1 billion is not only the largest open-source deal yet, it's almost bigger than all previous open-source deals combined, including RedHat's $326 million buy of JBoss, Citrix's $500 million purchase of XenSource and Yahoo's $350 million acquisition of Zimbra.
710497
'Unfair and misleading' Some of the biggest software companies are facing possible investigation by the UK's Office of Fair Trading because their licensing agreements are unfair.â¦
234423
(InfoWorld) - The Business Software Alliance has collected a record settlement of nearly $3.5 million from an international media firm that was usingÂ unlicensed software, the trade group announced Tuesday. The settlement between BSA and the company, which BSA declined to name for legal reasons, followed a criminal complaint the trade group made on behalf of members Microsoft, Adobe Systems, Avid Technology, and Autodesk. The BSA complaint led to police raids on the company's premises last year, the trade group said. BSA did its own investigation of the company's software licenses and alleged copyright infringement. The settlement with the company requires it to delete all unlicensed software products and purchase the licenses for the software it plans to use. The large penalties were the result of an extended period of unlicensed software use, BSA said. "This situation came about because we relied on a single individual to keep us compliant and manage our software assets across multiple-locations during a period of significant expansion," an unnamed source at the company said in a BSA news release. "The management were shocked at the scale of the situation and recognize that by having software management processes and tools in place this could have been avoided." Software from BSA members was "core to this company's business and yet it failed to manage this vital business asset," Robert Holleyman, BSA's president and CEO, said in a statement. "Sadly it is the BSA's experience that companies undergoing periods of rapid growth, as in this case, can overlook software licensing issues." The settlement cost the company significantly more than if it had managed licensed software, Holleyman added.
80262
Riverdeep Inc., an Irish educational software publisher, agreed to buy U.S. textbook publisher Houghton Mifflin for about $1.75 billion in cash and the assumption of about $1.61 billion in net debt, the companies said on Wednesday.
342623
The worldâs largest software supplier, Microsoft, has won a nine-year contract worth an estimated Â£500m to supply IT systems to the NHS.
300451
Oracle has acquired Bridgestream, a maker of software that helps companies map employee responsibilities, Oracle said Wednesday.
544168
SAP is buying a small Indian software company to help beef up the business process management capabilities in its NetWeaver applications platform.It is purchasing Yasu Technologies, a maker of business rules management software, which helps ensure that business processes automated through software are in compliance with a company&#39;s rules and regulations.SAP characterized the deal, announced at its Tech Ed conference in Munich, Germany, on Wednesday, as a &quot;fill in&quot; acquisition that would bridge a gap in its technologies. The deal is due to close this month and financial terms were not disclosed.Several vendors, including SAP, are providing software tools that allow companies to automate common business processes, such as issuing a purchase order or checking inventory levels, with the goal of making them more efficient.But SAP does not yet offer tools for managing these processes, and buying Yasu will help it to add such BPM (business process management) capabilities to NetWeaver.SAP will begin pilot tests of its first BPM product, code-named Galaxy, in the first quarter of next year. The technology acquired from Yasu will be integrated with Galaxy around the middle of next year, said Klaus Kreplin, SAP&#39;s head of NetWeaver technology.Yasu&#39;s software helps companies to enforce the rules that their business processes must abide by. If a company automates a project approval process, for example, Yasu will send projects under a certain budget to a midlevel manager for approval, and more costly projects to a senior manager.&quot;The nice thing is, you can define rules and make them available as a service that can be integrated with other applications,&quot; Kreplin said.Yasu was founded in 1999 and has about 120 employees. Customers include the automaker BMW, according to its Web site.BPM is one of several areas SAP is entering to compete better with its main applications rival, Oracle. SAP will also offer software for building composite applications, called the NetWeaver Composition Environment, and developing hosted applications for smaller companies, called SAP Business ByDesign.The Galaxy software will be integrated with NetWeaver Composition Environment next year. Eventually that, in turn, will be offered as a part of Business ByDesign, Kreplin said, although he wouldn&#39;t say when.Last week SAP said it would&#160;buy business intelligence vendor Business Objects&#160;for S$6.8 billion. A few days later&#160;Oracle offered to buy BEA Systems, whose software competes with SAP&#39;s NetWeaver, for $6.7 billion, but BEA called the offer too low.SAP CEO Henning Kagermann told the Financial Times of London over the weekend that SAP won&#39;t enter a bidding war for BEA, and that its strategy is still to grow its two core businesses -- applications and middleware -- organically.But he wouldn&#39;t rule out further big acquisitions in areas where SAP is not already strong. &quot;We are categorically not excluding further big acquisitions,&quot; Kagermann said, according to the Financial Times.The company also continues to snap up smaller companies. SAP has bought more than a dozen vendors in the past three years, according to IDC, including five in 2005, three in 2006, and six so far in 2007, including Yasu and Business Objects. That compares to more than 30 acquisitions for Oracle, a few of which were much larger deals.
260882
Irish investment company HM Rivergroup said that it has agreed to buy two US publishers, Houghton Mifflin and Riverdeep for a combined 4.6 billion dollars (3.5 billion euros).
536169
Microsoft offers to buy the Norwegian search software company Fast Search & Transfer for $1.2bn (Â£607m).
163782
LONDON, England -- UK-based advertising giant WPP Group says it has won the bidding to acquire US agency Grey Global. WPP, the world&#39;s second-largest advertising company, said Sunday it had reached agreement
343801
(InfoWorld) - Hewlett-Packard plans to acquire business transactions monitoring software vendor Bristol Technology. HP announced Monday that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Bristol as a way to beef up its business technology optimization (BTO) product offerings. The vendor didn't reveal the financial terms of the deal. Bristol's TransactionVision software helps customers monitor complex business transactions ranging from insurance claim processes to product orders and inventory management. Users can manage processes running on J2EE or .Net application servers as well as processes running on mainframes. With Bristol under its belt, HP said it will be better positioned to provide users with end-to-end management of their real-time business transactions and extend its HP Business Availability Center business service and application management software to the mainframe. HP and Bristol are already partners. Bristol's TransactionVision software is integrated with HP's Business Availability Center and its Universal Configuration Management Database (CMDB) software, both of which were products HP acquired when it purchased Mercury Interactive last year. As part of an ongoing company-wide restructuring effort designed to make the vendor more competitive and efficient, HP has beenÂ revamping its software business, creating a number of focused units. In December, following the completion of its $4.5 billionÂ acquisition of Mercury, HP created a BTO unit to bring together Mercury's application management software with HP's OpenView systems and network management technologies. Founded in 1991, privately held Bristol has its headquarters in Danbury, Connecticut, and the majority of its customers are financial services and insurance companies in the U.S. and the U.K., including JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Florida. Bristol started off as a provider of cross-platform development tools with its Wind/U offering, which is still in use, for porting Windows applications to Unix and Linux. In 1998, the vendor began to change its focus to also encompass enterprise software. Subject to closing conditions, HP expects to complete the acquisition within the next 30 days. At that point, Bristol will become part of the HP Software unit inside the vendor's Technology Solutions Group.
250455
BAE Systems PLC, Europe&#39;s largest military company, said yesterday that it had agreed to acquire DigitalNet Holdings for $494.
430910
Experian, Nottingham, United Kingdom, a global information solutions company, said yesterday that it acquired QAS Ltd., London, for $189 million, which includes $28.5 million of cash reserves.
435953
The world's second-largest maker of business software was created in the deal, which ended a long and hostile battle.
422635
Open Text's major software acquisition takes flight.
505153
Business & money: Deal could trigger takeover bid for seller Whitbread.