The acquisition locomotive thunders through supply chain country
By Staff -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 3/1/2004 12:00:00 AM
First it was FreeMarkets taking up Covisint's automotive-auctions business, only to be followed shortly thereafter with the announcement that Ariba is buying FreeMarkets. That merger gives the enterprise spend management solutions space a sourcing-services boost. Also in January, sourcing and supply chain management vendor Verticalnet acquired privately held sourcing/supply chain consultancy Tigris. Verticalnet, too, offers spend analysis solutions, which Tim Minahan, VP of supply chain research for Boston-based Aberdeen Group, believes "is the first stage of any successful supply chain initiative."
The agreement to acquire demand-chain management apps vendor HAHT Commerce by Global eXchange Services, a B2B e-commerce pioneer, was announced mid-January, and is expected to yield a comprehensive solution for product information management and data synchronization. Also, ECnet Limited, an e-supply chain solutions vendor, has been acquired by R Systems, an IT outsourcing company based in India, with the intent to penetrate Asia's manufacturing industry.
The business process management (BPM) space also saw the purchase of event management vendor Vigilance by Arzoon, a supply chain process management provider. Also, Fuego, a leading vendor in BPM software, has appointed John Lauck—a former executive with Chatham Technologies, Parametric Technology Corp., and Oracle Corp.—as CEO. Fuego says it has racked up numerous enterprise-level clients in the last six months, including Hewlett-Packard, Apache Corp., and American Express.
In other management news, John Howaniec comes to product life-cycle management vendor Cohesia as CEO, from what is now UGS PLM Solutions, where as president, his P&L responsibility exceeded $100 million. Cohesia is an enterprise solution provider with 100-plus companies in its user base, including GE Aircraft Engines, Aerojet, and Haynes International. Also, Nigel Davies, senior VP, products, Catalyst International, is the newly appointed chairman of the board for The Open Applications Group (OAGi), the largest publisher of XML-based content for business software interoperability. Davies formed OAGi's Supply Chain Execution project team.
Among new alliances recently struck, those for supply chain include an agreement between Intermec Technologies and Cisco Systems focused on wireless technology in handheld devices; Radio Beacon and Systems Concepts, for RFID and warehouse management; PeopleSoft and Create!form, spanning business document creation and delivery; and Velosel and Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, to bring data synchronization solutions to consumer goods manufacturers.
In asset management, FileNet teams up with McLaren Software for enterprise content management coupled with asset and plant life-cycle management; MicroMain and Stilwell & Associates, for an integrated asset/facility and safety management system; and Honeywell Process Solutions and Symbol Technologies, to integrate asset management with mobile computing and wireless data capture.
