Home » News » M&A » M&As – June 2004

M&As – June 2004

Avatar photoby Ben Rossi

When Oracle’s lawyers needed to bolster their courtroom argument that the company’s proposed acquisition of PeopleSoft should not be blocked on the grounds that it would reduce competition in the business applications market, they were quick to cite the name of a company that – only a few years back – had been written off as a casualty of those same competitive forces.

SSA, the Chicago-based company that now appends ‘Global Technologies’ to its name to distinguish it from its namesake that went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in mid-2000 and sold its assets and 25% of the new company to Wall Street finance group Gores Technology for $52 million, is not just revived, says the Oracle defence. It has risen to become a powerful competitor by feeding a keen appetite for acquisition.

And as if to underscore Oracle’s point, mid-way through the courtroom drama, on 1 July, SSA obligingly swooped on Marcam, the venerable vendor of process manufacturing software, only two weeks after having slotted new logistics and global trade management technology from start-up Arzoon into its portfolio.

That portfolio is certainly now broad: the latest additions follow the acquisition of supply chain, manufacturing and business applications vendors in the form of Computer Associates’ interBiz division, Baan, Infinium Software, Ironside Technologies, Elevon, ICL Max International and EXE Technologies – a combination that is designed to fulfil the company’s ambition of reaching $1 billion in revenues by the end of calendar 2004.

Its new trophy, Marcam, brings SSA an array of enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications – including software sold under the brand names Protean, Prism and Avantis for order, inventory and schedule management, purchasing, costing and financials – used by more than 1,000 mid-sized and large organisations.

Analysts suggest Marcam complements last year’s purchase of Baan in two ways. Both were bought from struggling UK-headquartered engineering conglomerate, Invensys, and both sell ERP software to the manufacturing industry, which makes up the vast majority of SSA’s customers, with Baan leaning more towards discrete manufacturing and Marcam focusing more on process manufacturing.

Analysts at Meta and AMR say the combination of EXE, Baan and now Arzoon over the last year has indeed put SSA in a strong position to challenge ERP giants with a ‘best-of-breed’ line up.

And now one further event is bringing SSA’s full rehabilitation in sight: The company aims to wipe out its historical debts, plus make further acquisitions, with the $200 million it hopes to raise in a forthcoming initial public offering.

   
 
Key IT industry acquisitions in June
Acquirer   Activity   HQ   Target   Activity   HQ   Price  
Accel-KKR Investment group US Alias Graphics Graphics s/w US $57.5m
ASG Management s/w &services US Istria Management s/w France n/a
Cisco Systems Networking products UK Procket Networks Router technology US $89.0m
Dixons Electronics prod retail UK Micro Warehouse UK PC &systems distributor UK n/a
Edocs Cust self-service/billing s/w US Firepond’s Brightware unit Email mgmt s/w US n/a
F5 Networks Application Traffic Mgmt s/w US MagniFire WebSystems Internet apps firewall s/w US $29.0m
GL Trade Financial trading s/w US Iris Group Options Market s/w Holland n/a
Gores Technology Investment firm US Inmac PC &systems distributor France n/a
Int’l Business Sys Business application s/w Germany JGI Supply Chain Division Business application s/w US n/a
ITXC VolP carrier US Teleglobe Telecomms s/w &services US n/a
JDA Software Retail management s/w US QRS Retail s/w &services US n/a
Macrovision Appln dev s/w US InstallShield Software Installation automation s/w US $96.0m
MatrixOne PLM technology US Synchronicity Software Design management s/w US $18.0m
Management buy-out – Germany Micro Warehouse Germany PC &systems distributor Germany n/a
Management buy-out – Neth Micro Warehouse Netherlands PC &systems distributor Neth n/a
Mentor Graphics Electronic design s/w US Atair Compiler s/w Austria n/a
Platinum Equity Investment firm US CompuCom Systems IT s/w &services US $254.0m
SSA Global ERP &CRM s/w US Arzoon Trading logistics management s/w US n/a
Stellent Content management s/w US Optika ECM s/w US $10.0m
Symbol Technologies Enterprise mobility s/w US Trio Security Network &mobile security s/w US n/a
Systems Union Group Software vendor UK ncSoft Financial s/w UK £0.5m
Systems Union Group Software vendor UK Lasata Software Business intelligence s/w Australia £11.0m
Unisys Systems &services US ePresence Security s/w &services US n/a
Usinternetworking Application hosting svcs US Appshop Application outsourcing svcs US n/a
 
   

Avatar photo

Ben Rossi

Ben was Vitesse Media's editorial director, leading content creation and editorial strategy across all Vitesse products, including its market-leading B2B and consumer magazines, websites, research and...

Related Topics

Related Stories

Cybersecurity

Cisco to acquire Splunk for $28bn in equity

In the aim to bolster observability capabilities, the agreed acquisition of Splunk by Cisco comes in response to increasing AI presence across business

Data Analytics & Data Science

Qlik completes acquisition of Talend

Global data integration and analytics provider Qlik has acquired data management vendor Talend, to bolster automated delivery of business insights

Business & Strategy

Keys to successful M&A technology integration

Any merger or acquisition completion will call for the combination of tech from the different networks involved. In this article, we explore the keys to a successful M&A technology integration.

Automation & Robotics

Schneider Electric completes acquisition of AVEVA

UK-based industrial software company AVEVA has been acquired by global automation and energy management specialists Schneider Electric, to bolster industrial digital transformation efforts