My ERP supplier has been acquired - now what?
474023
Jump ship or stay? Given the recent abundance of mergers and acquisitions among the mid-market ERP vendors, IT directors managing an ERP system may feel uncertain about the future of their incumbent system. Yet it is critical to be able to assure the board the product won't disappear - or at least warn them if it's time to switch vendors.â¦
718927
(InfoWorld) - Just a day afterÂ debuting a new initiative to produce more industry-specific functionalityÂ for users of its Dynamics business applications, Microsoft Tuesday announced it had purchased IP (intellectual property) and code relevant to the manufacturing sector. Previously, Microsoft relied on its partners to meet the industry-specific needs of its customers, but in response to feedback from those communities, itÂ is now working to add in capabilities to its ERPÂ applications in five key vertical markets -- manufacturing, distribution, retail, services, and the public sector. Microsoft said Tuesday at its Convergence conference in San Diego that it has acquired the IP and code for eBECS's lean manufacturing module. EBECS is a Microsoft partner and reseller of Dynamics AX based in Chesterfield in the U.K. The companies didn't reveal any financial details around the deal. Lean manufacturing is an approach designed to streamline manufacturing, ensuring the shortest time between receiving a customer's order and shipping that order by getting rid of any inherent waste of resources involved in the manufacturing process. Microsoft will use the eBECS module to extend the existing core functionality of its Dynamics AX ERP software so that users can better optimize their processes and connect and integrate their entire supply chains from their customers through to their supply partners, according to Glenn Bray, senior director of Microsoft's industry solutions. By the end of this year, Microsoft will make the English-language module available to its customers, with plans to integrate the code into the next version of Dynamics AX and fully localize it to support all of the 40 languages in which its ERP software is available. Partners who've been trying to attract high-end customers told Microsoft that they were keen for the software giant to become more proactive about industry-specific offerings. "They want Microsoft to stand behind a solution," Bray said. Customers are keen to know they can still count on Microsoft's support should a particular partner change the focus of their business to a different industry or run into some kind of trouble. Microsoft highlighted acquisition as one way it plans to build in additional vertical functionalities to its Dynamics ERP families along with internal development and strategic alliances with its partners. Back in January, the vendor announced a co-development effort with public-sector information management software vendor Tyler Technologies. The two companies are working together to provide public-sector accounting functionality for Dynamics AX with an enhanced version of the ERP software due to appear in the latter half of 2009. Looking ahead, Microsoft expects to create multiple relationships with partners in each of its five chosen industries, Bray said. He doesn't believe that Microsoft getting more involved in providing industry-specific functionality will lead to cannibalization of existing offerings from its partners. There'll be no requirement for partners, for example, to use Microsoft's own lean manufacturing module, Bray said. Instead, partners will be free to choose whichever software is most appropriate for them, so offerings from Microsoft and its partners addressing the same industry needs will coexist. Â
110046
Some business software vendors are determined to steer their own ships in a sea of acquisitions.
235775
Citrix's $500 million acquisition is done. Next up: new server and desktop virtualization products.
16507
Shoulders its way into search tech Business Objects' stated intention of becoming a $2bn company was never going to be achieved only through organic growth, and it was inevitable that there would be a number of acquisitions along the way, of which the latest is Inxight Software.â¦
186321
com November 24, 2004, 8:47 AM PT. This fourth priority&#39;s main focus has been enterprise directories for several months, but for many IT managers, ERP (enterprise resource planning) and open source initiatives are on the horizon.
378879
Updates Filenet IBM's appetite for acquiring software companies shows no signs of diminishing. Last year, the company conservatively spent $3.6bn, adding 12 companies or just their assets to its $18bn middleware business during 2006.â¦
489577
A consultant offered advice Tuesday regarding how Oracle customers can get the best deal and protect themselves while licensing software from the enterprise software giant.Oracle&#39;s licensing practices have been maligned as overly confusing and unfair. But Eliot Arlo Colon, president of Miro Consulting, an independent firm in Fords, N.J., didn&#39;t get into specifics about particular policies, instead organizing a webinar around four categories: compliance, discounts, ongoing annual support costs, and terms and conditions.&quot;When I look at e-mail subject lines, these are the things we get hit with,&quot; Colon said.&quot;Compliance is the foundation. Without it, nothing else matters,&quot; he said, adding that it is &quot;not a gray area. Either you&#39;re compliant or you&#39;re not. ... If you consider areas [of use] gray, or your vendor considers areas gray, you should be concerned.&quot;Companies should self-audit their licenses twice a year, and it should be a &quot;thorough review,&quot; not a couple of mass e-mails, he said: &quot;It&#39;s definitely more of a bear than most people would anticipate.&quot;A third party should review the audit, and the company must possess a &quot;stated and defendable&quot; position on gray areas, he added. It is also wise to get assumptions confirmed in writing: &quot;If it&#39;s not stated in your agreement that you have that right, chances are you do not have that right,&quot; he said.Oracle vigorously defends its intellectual property, according to Colon. &quot;You always have to assume an audit is only 30 days away,&quot; he said. &quot;We&#39;ve worked with companies that say &#39;We&#39;re a strategic partner, we&#39;re in the Oracle top 50,&#39; and then they&#39;re audited.&quot;Colon offered a range of advice concerning license cost. While Oracle and other vendors tend to offer better deals at certain times of the year, customers shouldn&#39;t be easily tempted by a low price, he said: &quot;Waiting until a vendor&#39;s end-of-year, end-of-quarter may not be in your best interest if it&#39;s changing your business process. ... Everyone wants to get a good deal, but discount isn&#39;t the whole game. It&#39;s total cost of ownership.&quot;To that end, organizations should take a close look at their existing annual support costs, he said: &quot;You may find that your support is a lot better than you thought, or you might find products that you&#39;re supporting and not using. ... or that Oracle has acquired half the software you&#39;ve got and now it can be supported under one envelope.&quot;In fact, enterprises should review their annual support spending at least twice per year, Colon argued.IT shops should also seek to rework any complex and ambiguous language in license contracts; determine how globalization and consolidation has altered their company&#39;s licensing needs; mull the ramifications of licensing among mobile workers; and ensure they have collected all proofs of purchases for storage in an asset management repository, Colon said. His company advises enterprise-software customers of companies, including Oracle and Microsoft.When renewal time comes, companies should weigh whether it makes more sense to renew the existing pact or formulate a new one, according to Colon. &quot;Businesses are very dynamic. If you have an agreement signed four years ago, chances are it doesn&#39;t work for you today,&quot; he said.Firms must also ensure they and Oracle are working from the same set of terms and conditions, Colon warned: &quot;You want to make sure you&#39;re protected -- believe me, Oracle is going to make sure they&#39;re protected.&quot;
459909
InfoWorld - Pure-play vendors of SOA governance solutions have been dropping like flies: Infravio was bought by webMethods, and Systinet by Mercury Interactive (which was then swallowed by HP). Yet SOA Software, one of the few remaining independents, continues to bulk up.
768121
IBM said it plans to acquire software vendor Systemcorp for an undisclosed sum. The Montreal company makes project portfolio management software for helping companies manage IT projects.
180546
Some months ago, enterprise applications provider JDA was all set to acquire QRS, a company that specializes in electronic data interchange (EDI), data synchronization, and catalogues, particularly for the retail vertical.
522703
Security vendor is expanding to Web applications with acquisition of firewall vendor.
495145
(InfoWorld) - EMC has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Valyd Software, a Hyderabad, India, vendor of software for securing enterprise data. EMC did not disclose the sum it will pay for Valyd, a privately held company. Valyd's software will be brought into RSA, the security division of EMC that was set up last year to integrate products from itsÂ acquisition of RSA SecurityÂ andÂ Network Intelligence. The acquisition is expected to close in the first quarter, the Hopkinton, Massachusetts, vendor of storage management and security software said Tuesday. Valyd's technology for encrypting and securing data at the database and file system level will lead to the introduction of two new products from the RSA division, after the acquisition is complete, said Manoj Chugh, president of EMC India, on Wednesday. RSA Database Security Manager will address security of data on a variety of database management systems, while RSA File Security Manager will secure data security at the file and folder level, Chugh said. A focus of the RSA division is on products that manage and secure enterprise-wide information assets regardless of where they resides on the network, Chugh said. Valyd's technology, which runs on a large variety of operating systems and database systems, fitted well into the strategy of the RSA division, he added. Valyd Software was set up in 1998 to develop software to secure enterprise data. The company has over 50 staff in Hyderabad, which will be increased to 100 by the end of this year, Chugh said. The Hyderabad operation will focus on the development and enhancement of the new security products, he added. Indian product companies have emerged as acquisition targets for multinational companies. Oracle Corp., for example, has acquired a majority stake in Indian financial software company, i-flex Solutions Ltd. "India was until now perceived as a low-cost location for outsourcing work, rather than as a place where you could find top quality innovation and intellectual property," Chugh said.
438856
The company is in trouble once again. What's it going to take?
109903
When Oracle executives in JanuaryÂ publicly described the vendor's Fusion projectÂ to create a new suite of enterprise applications as halfway done, they were referring to the completion of the smaller middleware piece of the massive multibillion dollar project, according to the man in charge of that undertaking. Much work remains to be done on the larger applications piece of Fusion.
689284
IBM&#39;s $5 billion acquisition of business intelligence software vendor Cognos took a step forward on Thursday as European regulators gave their approval to the deal.After examining the acquisition, the European Commission said in a statement that it &quot;would not give rise to competition concerns, since the parties&#39; combined market share would be moderate.&quot;IBM announced its intention to buy Cognos, based in Ottawa, in November, saying it hoped to combine the Cognos software with IBM&#39;s back-end database products. They hope to close the deal by the end of March, but there are still a few regulatory requirements to be met, including the approval of Canada&#39;s minister of industry.Business intelligence software is used to analyze data from different sources within a company and help management get a better picture of the business. Several business intelligence software vendors have been acquired recently, including&#160;Hyperion, purchased by Oracle, and&#160;Business Objects, purchased by SAP.IBM to date has partnered with business intelligence software vendors, providing the back-end infrastructure components. But changing customer demands sparked its interest in Cognos, according to Ambuj Goyal, general manager of information management in IBM&#39;s software group and a key player in the Cognos deal.&quot;Now, more and more clients are saying, &#39;We are not an integration technology business, we are in a business-outcome business. You do the integration,&#39;&quot; he said in a recent interview. &quot;More and more clients are not doing best-of-breed purchases.&quot;(Chris Kanaracus in Boston contributed to this story.)&#160;
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.