Conventional wisdom would imply that a software company that changes its owners and CEO in the same year might be in some kind of trouble or facing stormy waters. But, Deltek vigorously claims that nothing is farther from the truth. Quite the contrary, in fact—via its 2012 acquisition by Thoma Bravo, Deltek believes it has found a dedicated and committed financial backer. In addition, there was nothing sinister in Deltek’s CEO change in late 2012. After a transformational seven-plus years with Deltek, former CEO Kevin Parker left the company under his own volition. Seven-and-a-half years is a nice run at an enterprise software company, and Parker felt that it was the right time for him to step back a bit after accomplishing a lot of the goals he set out to accomplish back in 2005 (plus, he might have begun to miss the US West Coast where he hails from).

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A few weeks ago I discussed Deltek’s journey from its founding in 1983 until its recently announced impending delisting from NASDAQ and going private under Thoma Bravo’s ownership, for the second time in its history. The article presented some opposing views on what this acquisition might mean for Deltek, its customers, and partners.

In light of the company’s recent quarterly results and the upcoming Deltek Insight 2012 user conference in mid-October 2012, this post features my conference previews discussion with Patrick Smith, Vice President, Corporate Marketing and Communications at Deltek.

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It would be an understatement to say that Deltek, the leading global provider of enterprise software and information solutions for professional services firms and government contractors, has had an interesting journey since it was founded in 1983 by the deLaski duo of father and son. In 2005, the original founders sold their majority ownership and gave up day-to-day involvement in the company, and Deltek was recapitalized by a private equity organization called New Mountain Capital based in New York, NY. The software company went public again in November 2007. Read the rest of this entry »

TEC’s mid-2011 article, which reported on the Deltek Insight 2011 conference, indicated that Deltek has lately become the leader in market intelligence for government contractors (in addition to long being the leading provider of GovCon enterprise software solutions and professional services). By using Deltek’s market intelligence services, companies are able to benchmark their performance against their GovCon peers.

As of late 2011, Deltek has been hosting a number of in-person seminars and Webinars that are related to Deltek’s Clarity survey — the industry’s largest annual survey of government contractors (Deltek also does similar surveys for the architechture and engineering [A&E] and marketing agency space). Deltek’s third annual Clarity Report for Government Contracting, available today, unveils the results of Deltek’s annual study of top performance benchmarks in government contracting.

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Part 1 of this blog series started with me lamenting my inability to attend the Deltek Insight 2010 conference. However, I recently had an in-depth post-event recap instead with Deltek’s in-the-know staff members.

What then followed in Part 1 were descriptions of the major developments that transpired at Deltek Insight 2010 in terms of already released products and those that were only sneak previewed (but will be released down the track). Part 2 will analyze the corporate announcements and some new (perhaps refreshing) directions, as well as provide a glimpse of what we might expect at Deltek Insight 2011.

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Both the “old” Deltek (pre-2005) and “new” Deltek (from 2005 on) have not been strangers to acquisitions, but these were largely well thought-out and appetizing (“nip in”) purchases of smaller companies that had either an attractive piece of technology or install base (or both). However, in early June 2010, immediately after its Insight 2010 user conference, Deltek announced its intent to acquire Maconomy A/S, a Denmark-based provider of solutions to the professional services market. On July 6, Deltek announced the completion of its tender offer to acquire the European enterprise resourceplanning (ERP) provider.

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