Acquisition craze has a steady customer backbeat
By Staff -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 11/1/2003 12:00:00 AM
The buying beat goes on. Agile Software has completed its acquisition of privately held Tradec in a deal that enhances Agile's cost management offering, Agile Product Cost Management, by leveraging Tradec's software for addressing key aspects of direct materials cost and performance management. Agile will use Tradec's content partners to provide reference data for enhancing product life-cycle management decision-making processes. The acquisition also establishes a relationship for Agile with Avnet, which offers cost management solutions for small to midsize companies.
Enterprise vendor Cincom Systems recently purchased Synchrony Communications "to provide Cincom users with the ability to integrate multichannel communications and achieve faster ROI," says Tom Nies, president of Cincom, adding, "Synchrony is the best technology in the world for managing customer interaction."
webMethods is set to acquire The Mind Electric (TME), which sells software for service-oriented architectures, including TME's GLUE, a Web services platform for building and deploying enterprise-class distributed applications. webMethods intends to rename the product webMethods GLUE, saying it brings the simplicity of .NET to Java users while bridging the interoperability gap between .NET and J2EE. webMethods GLUE can be plugged into any application server.
Information storage leader EMC Corp. will acquire Documentum in a stock transaction valued at approximately $1.7 billion. By incorporating Documentum's content management solutions with EMC's open software for data protection, storage management, and information management, the company will offer users an information life-cycle management solution for managing unstructured content, from creation and use, to archive and disposal.
Speaking of content management, Optika is making integrations available between its Acorde software and PeopleSoft 8 Financial Management solutions so users can easily store e-images of paper documents. Online access to docs from the PeopleSoft applications essentially will cut the costs of storing and retrieving paper docs. Optika also is working with Nth Orbit for Sarbanes-Oxley compliance in the form of a controls library and internal controls application based upon the SEC's designated COSO Framework, as well as workflow and records management.
Citrix Systems' MetaFrame Access Suite recently took Gartner's Midsize Enterprise Innovation Award for "Best Manufacturing Solution," selected from a group of 10 technology vendors by 80-plus manufacturing senior IT executives who attended Gartner's Midsize Enterprise Summit Central in September in Austin, Texas. The suite offers secure access to enterprise apps and information using any device, over any connection.
At the ISA Expo 2003 in Houston in October, Invensys and Microsoft announced their plans to accelerate the development of solutions and services that improve the real-time exchange of data in a production environment. The companies intend to link Invensys' ArchestrA architecture with Microsoft .NET and the Microsoft Windows Server System to integrate all production management systems, from ERP and warehouse management to CRM.
