Internet company Yahoo! has entered into an agreement to acquire the Tumblr social blogging service. According to the official press release:

Per the agreement and our promise not to screw it up, Tumblr will be independently operated as a separate business. David Karp will remain CEO. The product, service and brand will continue to be defined and developed separately with the same Tumblr irreverence, wit, and commitment to empower creators. 

Or, in other words, Tumblr can go on being Tumblr, if it’s not distracted by Yahoo! adds. Read the rest of this entry »

US-based retail hardware and software giant NCR has agreed to pay approximately $650 million to acquire Retalix, a retail technology company.

NCR management is using many elliptical phrases about “strengthening strategy,” “commitment to delivering solutions,” and “improving business processes and enabling experiences,” but there were no clearly stated reasons for the deal. Read the rest of this entry »

Microsoft has acquired the marketing automation software company MarketingPilot. According to the press release, the new acquisition will be integrated into the Microsoft Dynamics CRM suite. MarketingPilot specialized in software that addresses marketing management demands ranging from insight into customer needs to automation of multi-channel marketing campaigns. MarketingPilot appears to provide strong analytics capabilities that can reveal the return on marketing investment for each campaign. This appears to be the key motivation for the acquisition. As more and more customer relationship management (CRM) products are aspiring to become social and benefit from these new channels of communication, Microsoft is hoping to assess the effectiveness of each campaign as well as its medium of delivery.

It seems that there are more and more acquisitions in the area of human capital management (HCM) these days. At the end of 2010, we saw enterprise resource planning (ERP) vendors Epicor acquire Spectrum HR and Lawson Software acquire Enwisen. Now it’s Workstream’s turn.

Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, IBM the blue giant announced its acquisition of Clarity Systems, a privately held company with its corporate base in Toronto (Canada). Complete press release here.

According to Mark Nashman, president and CTO of Clarity Systems: “Clarity System’s unified approach offers the flexibility, security, and control needed to make more informed business decisions while meeting compliance requirements.”

This enables IBM to extend its business analytics initiatives and provide a complete stack of analytic applications.

“Smarter decisions thrive on accurate financial information, and it is therefore imperative that financial governance systems reduce risk of error and provide confidence in the external reporting process,” said Rob Ashe, general manager of business analytics for IBM.

Is this an IBM positioning regarding SAP’s recent analytic products launch?

This acquisition seems to be part of IBM’s general strategy to complete the circle regarding information management and analysis. The other pieces of this jigsaw puzzle: IBM acquired PSS systems, a company devoted to implement information governance policies for companies with large amounts of business information; and recently completed the acquisition of OpenPages to enhance its offering in the field of risk management and compliance.

The data management and analysis area remains squarely in the sights of the big software vendors, as many companies are still looking to improve business performance and decision-making processes through the use of more powerful and resourceful tools.

I welcome your thoughts—leave a comment below, and I’ll respond as soon as I can.

In the enterprise open source space, a notable change came to light today affecting Compiere users and partners. Consona announced its acquisition of Compiere.

Compiere started back in 1999. One of its founders explained to me that the company’s business (circa 2004) largely came from support, migration, and priority requests from clients. An integral component of the delivery model was Compiere’s partners. So Compiere focused on providing second-level support to their network of local partners. These areas are where I’m most curious about Compiere’s move to the Consona fold. Read the rest of this entry »

Recently, I had a briefing with Jerome Ternynck (MrTed’s chief executive officer [CEO]) about the company and Version 9 of its product TalentLink. One key statement that Jerome made on talent acquisition was that before you manage talent, you need to make sure you acquire the right people for your company. Many human capital management (HCM) vendors have talent acquisition functionality as part of their offering, but MrTed specializes in this first and essential step of the talent management spectrum.

A Little Bit of History

MrTed was founded in 1999 by two recruitment specialists—Frederic Trinel and Jerome Ternynck. In 2000, MrTed raised a significant amount of venture capital and released MrTed’s flagship product called MrTedTalentLink (in November 2000). Read the rest of this entry »

Many people are aware of a reality show on television titled “Jon & Kate Plus 8”, which features a couple that is separated and ready to get divorced. Occasionally couples have disagreements and need to get away from each other to sort things out then come back to the table with new perspectives.  That’s what JDA and i2 have done with their deal from last year. JDA plans (once again) to acquire i2 Technologies. This time around, the offer is for $396 million (USD). Read the rest of this entry »

A few months ago while I was listening to Dassault Systèmes (DS) executives explaining the company’s sales and marketing strategies and achievements, I wondered what the next move might be since I found the relationship between DS and IBM was becoming more delicate than before. My concern was that a very sophisticated approach would be required in order to grow DS’s own sales capability, while keeping the strong and long-time DS/IBM partnership in good shape. Here’s the answer to my question: a press release from DS on October 26 tells us that “Dassault Systèmes and IBM Announce Intent to Integrate IBM PLM Sales Operation into DS.” Read the rest of this entry »

A definitive agreement was reached between HP and EDS today where HP will purchase the global outsourcing company for $13.9 billion ($25 a share).

EDS is a global technology services company centering on information outsourcing. It serves both the private and public sectors, with core areas including manufacturing, financial services, healthcare, communications, energy, transportation, and consumer and retail industries.

HP is one of the world’s largest technology companies with revenues totaling $107.7 billion for the four fiscal quarters ending Jan. 31, 2008. Read the rest of this entry »

Like it or not, the enterprise software industry shifts constantly as vendors merge or acquire one another. But how does it affect you? Here are ten reasons.

1) Acquisitions can wreak havoc if you’re in the middle of an implementation
Does your ERP system provider have your concerns at heart during the vital implementation phase? Is it responding to your questions? Is your implementation on the high-priority list? If it’s in the midst of an acquisition or merger process, you’re probably not even on its radar screen.

2) Product discontinuation
After a merger or acquisition, vendors tend to discontinue (stabilize, kill, or however you’d like to phrase it) products. They embark on a forced-march upgrade to future (fused) products. Read the rest of this entry »