Articles tagged: acquisition

• Friday 3rd February 2012

  Misys and Temenos confirm merger talks

  Misys is back in the bid game, this time with Swissbased banking software competitor Temenos. Both parties have confirmed they are in discussions regarding an all share merger (and gave the usual cautions: early stage, no certainty that a transaction will take place etc).

  Misys was in discussions with Fidelity National Information Services (FIS) last August over an all cash offer but both parties walked away when they could not agree a price (see Misys and FIS leave the table).

  Neither Misys nor Temenos has had an easy time over the last year and more (see Temenos’ growing pains and most recently Misys acts to cut costs as market deteriorates). They are competing with bigger, richer providers in the banking software market such as Infosys with Finacle, TCS with BaNCS, and Oracle/iFlex with Flexcube. Against that background a merger would make sense by providing greater critical mass and pooled resources. It’s early days though. 

  Posted by

  Angela Eager

  at 08:36 - 0 comments

• Wednesday 1st February 2012

  Oracle: completion and plans for RightNow

  Having closed the $1.5bn acquisition of SaaS customer service provider RightNow Technologies (see here), Oracle is starting to outline what it will do with the company it says “is a big deal to us, it’s core to us”.

  It plans an “aggressive” development schedule to build new solutions that combine a host of (generally acquired) Oracle technology with RightNow’s capabilities. One of the early developments will be a solution aimed at improving the quality of the experience customers have with organisations. The project will combine components of FatWire web content management, Siebel marketing, Endeca search technology, ATG Commerce, and Fusion Applications such as financials and supply chain management, with RightNow’s service and customer experience capabilities. The Oracle Social Network will also be added to the mix. The solution will be available as a cloud service of course and we presume there will be an option to run in a hybrid mode too.

  What is notable about these early plans (more were outlined during the post-acquisition webcast) is Oracle’s intention to bring RightNow deep into the business and use it to revitalize its own CRM offerings. It feels like Oracle CRM lost momentum while the company focused its efforts on Fusion applications, the lacklustre Sun hardware division, and its Exa-everything appliances. 

  The plans are also designed to boost Oracle’s cloud credentials of course, as that was the prime reason for the acquisition. By creating end-to-end usage scenarios and wrapping RightNow into the wider portfolio Oracle is positioning cloud as an integral part of its business (not a late add-on). That might well work for Oracle itself and Oracle-heavy enterprises but we feel it misses some of the essential points of SaaS and the cloud such as flexibility and the ability for enterprises to chose the set of technologies that best suit them. Moving from an on premise stack to a cloud-based stack is not making the best use of the cloud. However, Oracle’s plans will open up opportunities for partners, who will be able to go to market with the cloud gap filled. 

  Posted by

  Angela Eager

  at 09:38 - 0 comments

• Wednesday 1st February 2012

  IBM bolsters mobile with planned Worklight purchase

  As part of our enterprise software predictions for 2012 (see here) we highlighted mobile as a key area of activity, and specifically movement around the Mobile Enterprise Application Platform area. It has not taken long for the first piece of action – IBM’s plan to acquire privately-held mobile Worklight, a provider of mobile development tools. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

  Mobile applications developed using Worklight tools can be developed once and run across multiple mobile platforms, which is a key requirement in today’s mobile environment. Worklight customers include Best Western, FIS Software and AT&T, who use the tools to create mobile applications for employees and customers.

  Worklight only enables mobile application development so IBM has also announced Endpoint Manager for Mobile Devices, which provides the ability to secure and manage employee’s mobile devices. The new software tool is based on technology gained through IBM’s BigFix acquisition in 2012. Application development and device management are twin requirements where mobile devices are concerned and MEAP’s such as Rhomobile, Syclo, Antenna, Pyxis and SAP’s Sybase, combine the two. Currently IBM’s solution is/will be based on separate tools, which may not be ideal. We’ll have to wait for the deal to close to find out how IBM will pull them together.

  The acquisition will add to the tools part of IBM’s software portfolio. Recently the company has concentrated on making purchases in the high growth areas of analytics and cloud applications. Mobile is a different area but shares the high growth potential. 

  Posted by

  Angela Eager

  at 08:51 - 0 comments

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