Consolidations in the BI industry
You can contact Barney Finucane, who maintains this list, if you have any comments,
observations or user experiences to add. Last updated on May 17th, 2011.
Introduction
The BI industry has seen a wave of acquisitions since the mid-1990s, with takeovers
occurring on a regular basis. The first wave was mainly created by companies who were
attracted by the higher growth rates in the BI industry and preferred to buy an existing
vendor rather than to develop their own product. These changes of ownership did not
produce any ‘consolidation’ because there was no net reduction in the number of BI
vendors or products. There was also no reduction in competition as market shares often
simply passed from the hands of an existing BI vendor to a new player.
Examples of such non-consolidating acquisitions include the entry of the various database
vendors into the BI market, such as Oracle’s purchase of the Express business from IRI
Software, Informix buying STG MetaCube and Microsoft’s purchase of the Panorama
technology.
But there have also been a number of cases where existing BI vendors acquired each other
and these have led to genuine consolidation. This is particularly true of SAP’s acquisition of
BusinessObjects. Although these acquisitions reduce the number of BI vendors, they do not
necessarily reduce the number of BI products, as often both product lines live on
separately in the merged company.
The perils of acquisition
Another big question is whether these consolidations are good for the products, the
existing users or shareholders in the acquiring companies. Clearly, in some cases, the
products have done much better under new ownership, because the new owner has far
more financial strength than the former owner. A recent example is the acquisition of TM1
by IBM (via Cognos) which is leading to higher sales of TM1 that were possible with the old
owner, Applix.
But in many cases, the product was less important to its new owner who accidentally or
otherwise neglected it.
ProClarity has disappeared from the market since its acquisition by Microsoft
Datamax has had no further development after its first re-release under Microsoft in 2001,
whereas Maximal Max would presumably have continued to develop had Maximal survived
or been acquired by a different company.
It is also likely that Express development would have continued more smoothly without
the badly mishandled transition to a new generation product that has occurred under
Oracle’s ownership.
Holos would almost certainly have done better had Seagate not acquired it.
MetaCube, too, would probably have survived longer without Informix’s ham fisted
intervention.
The two ROLAPs accidentally acquired by Computer Associates would almost certainly
have not been snuffed out so ignominiously had they remained independent.
More often than not, the shareholders of a company that acquires an OLAP vendor or
product have not received a good return. Some of the worst examples of squandered
shareholders’ assets include:
Informix’s acquisition of STG,
Arbor’s acquisition of Hyperion Software,
Seagate’s acquisition of Holistic Systems
SPSS’s acquisition of ShowCase.
BusinessObjects acquisition of SRC
Cognos’s acquisition of Adaytum and
Business Objects’ acquisition of Crystal Decisions
None of these are likely not to have generated a good return for their respective
shareholders.
The tables below list some of the many acquisitions since 1994. Note that some products
have changed hands more than once.
Pilot has had five owners since 1994.
Temtec was bought by Applix, which was bought by Cognos, which was bought in turn by
IBM – all within two years.
Comshare was bought by GEAC. MIS was bought by Systems Union Two years later GEAC
was acquired by Extensity, and several months later Systems Union was bought by
Extensity, which was bought only three days later by Infor.
Year by year list of consolidations
Where known, the purchase price is shown, though of course in some cases, this price is for
a whole company with both BI and other products.
For brevity, we have used acronyms in the tables which may not be familiar to all readers.
This is particularly true of the alphabet soup of functions in the area of data management
and operative BI. The following table provides a key to the abbreviations used here.
Abbreviation
Meaning
BAM
Business activity monitoring
CEP
Complex event processing
DI
Data integration
DBMS
Database management system (or simply database)
DQM
Data quality management
DW
Data warehouse
EAI
Enterprise application integration
EII
Enterprise information integration
GRC
Governance, risk and controlling
ILM
Information lifecycle management
MDM
Master data management
PM
Performance management
2011
The consolidation of the fast growing market for analytical databases continues in 2011.
Date
Acquired company
Product type
Acquiring company
Product type
Price
February 2011
Vertica
DBMS
HP
Middleware
>$200m
March 2011
Aster Data
Data Analysis
Teradata
DM
$263m
April 2011
Datanomic
DQM
Oracle
N/A
April 2011: Oracle acquires Datanomic
Oracle can hardly have digested the data quality vendor Silver Creek Systems, purchased
just over a year ago before swallowing this specialist in data profiling for compliance and
auditing purposes.
March 2011: Teradata acquires Aster Data
There had been some talk of HP acquiring Aster Data before this takeover. The Vertica
acquisition may have made it easier for Teradata to bid on Aster Data. The takeover came
just six months after Aster Data appointed Quentin Gallivan CEO.
Obviously, the immediate question is how to differentiate between the two products. The
answer is probably that Aster is for analysis of large data sets by small groups of users, but
Teradata is more strongly oriented towards operational projects. The future will show
whether it makes sense to have one sales force to sell these similar technologies to
disparate customer groups, and how much time and energy the company spends
integrating the similar but unrelated technologies.
This may be seen as a continuation of Teradata’s move towards applications and
marketing, as seen in its recent acquisition of the SaaS marketing specialist Aprimo.
February 2011: HP acquires Vertica
This acquisition comes hard on the heels of HP’s announcement that it is killing off
Neoview, unveiled less than four years earlier as “a next-generation data warehouse
platform and new business intelligence (BI) services” [sic]. Mark Hurd, an important
sponsor of Neoview, has moved on to Oracle. Vertica should give HP a new opportunity to
move into this fast growing market.
2010
The biggest news in 2010 was the takeovers in the area of analytical databases, with
Sybase, Kickfire and Greenplum being acquired.
Date
Acquired company
Product type
Acquiring company
Product type
Price
January 2010
Silver Creeks Systems
DQM/MDM
Oracle
N/A
January 2010
Siperian
MDM
Informatica
DI, DQ
$130m
April 2010
Realtime Monitoring GmbH
CEP
Software AG
BPM, PBI
<$10m
May 2010
Sybase
Mobile, DBMS
SAP
ERP, BI, DI, DQ
$5.2bn
May 2010
Cast Iron
DI
IBM
N/A
June 2010
Coremetrics
Web Analytics
IBM
N/A
July 2010
Greenplum
DBMS
EMC
Storage
N/A
August 2010
Kickfire
DBMS
Teradata
DM
N/A
September 2010
OpenPages
GRC
IBM
N/A
September 2010
Netezza
DW Appliance
IBM
$1.7 bn
October 2010
Clarity
Planning, Consolidation
IBM
N/A
November 2010
Quantrix
Planning Analysis
IDBS
R&D Data Management
N/A
December 2011
Aprimo
Marketing Automation
Teradata
DM
$525m
September 2010: IBM takes over Netezza
Netezza is a low cost appliance often used as a data warehouse running on IBM hardware.
Its products are mature enough that IBM is sure to continue marketing them. However, it is
not quite clear how the technologies of the two companies will be combined. IBM is likely
to emphasize Netezza’s analytic features. This may well be a reaction to SAP’s acquisition of
Sybase. Perhaps Oracle will follow with a similar move.
May 2010: SAP acquires Sybase
SAP is taking over Sybase for a whopping $5.8 billion dollars. There are two things about
Sybase that SAP may find attractive: mobile BI and the database business. SAP is probably
more interested in the mobile solutions from Sybase, which offer SAP some opportunities
in this growing area of content distribution. Sybase’s database business includes SQL
Anywhere for mobile platforms, ASE (a transactional relational database) and IQ, an
analytic, column-oriented relational database. SAP hopes to strengthen its portfolio in two
areas where it is currently not strong. It is also moving towards being a infrastructure
provider instead of just an application provider.
2009
Date
Acquired company
Product type
Acquiring company
Product type
Price
February 2009
Applimation
ILM
Informatica
DI, DQ
$40m
April 2009
Hologram Pty
BI
First Derivatives
Risk, ERP
$2.5m
May 2009
Lumensoft
Planning
arcplan
BI
N/A
June 2009
AddressDoctor
Address Cleansing
Informatica
DI, DQ
N/A
June 2009
Inforsense
Data Mining
IDBS
R&D Data Management
N/A
July 2009
SPSS
Data Mining
IBM
$1.2 bn
September 2009
Agent Logic
CEP
Informatica
DI, DQ
N/A
December 2009
Xenos
Document Streaming
Actuate
Reporting
$35.5m
July 2009: IBM acquires SPSS
IBM acquired SPSS with a view towards the increasingly fashionable market for predictive
analytics. IBM paid a premium of over 40% over the market price. Furthermore, SPSS’s key
feature is increasingly under pressure from the open source R programming language.
SPSS’s major competitor, the much bigger SAS, has relied increasingly on data management
to increase revenues in recent years, with its Dataflux subsidiary now accounting for more
than half of its revenues. But perhaps by combining SPSS with other components, IBM can
find new customers with SPSS.
2008
2008 was a slow year for takeovers after the feeding frenzy of 2007.
Date
Acquired company
Product type
Acquiring company
Product type
Price
March 2008
Teragram
Text mining
SAS
BI
N/A
March 2008
90 Degree Software
Content Management
Microsoft
N/A
April 2008
Identity Systems
DQM
Informatica
DI
$85m
May 2008
NuTech
Predictive Analysis
Netezza
DW Appliance
N/A
June 2008
Insightful
Data Mining
Tibco
BPM, Analysis
$25m
July 2008
Zoomix
DQM
Microsoft
ERP, BI
$20m-$30m
July 2008
DatAllegro
DW Appliance
Microsoft
ERP, BI
$60m
July 2008
Cubeware
BI
Cranes
Statistics
N/A
2007: The year of consolidation
Date
Acquired company
Product type
Acquiring company
Product type
Price
January 2007
Celequest
BAM
Cognos
BI
N/A
January 2007
Decisioneering
Simulation
Hyperion
BI
N/A
February 2007
Pilot
BSC
SAP
ERP, BI
N/A
March 2007
Hyperion
BI
Oracle
DBMS, ERP, BI
$3.3bn
April 2007
Cartesis
Planning, Consolidation
Business Objects
BI
$300m
April 2007
MetaMatrix
Data Federation
Red Hat
Middleware
N/A
May 2007
Spotfire
Visual Analysis
Tibco
BPM
$195m
May 2007
OutlookSoft
Planning, Consolidation
SAP
ERP, BI
$375m
May 2007
Corvu
BI, BSC
Rocket
Infrastructure
N/A
July 2007
Stratature
MDM
Microsoft
ERP, BI
N/A
July 2007
Data Mirror
DI
IBM
$170m
August 2007
BonaVista (MicroCharts)
Visualization
XLCubed
BI
N/A
September 2007
Applix
Planning, Analysis
Cognos
BI
$306m
September 2007
Purisma
DQ,MDM
Dun & Bradstreet
Company Information
$48m
September 2007
Fuzzy
DQ
Business Objects
BI, DI
N/A
October 2007
Business Objects
BI, DI
SAP
ERP, BI
$6.8bn
November 2007
Cognos
BI
IBM
$4.9bn
November 2007
Longview
Planning
Exact
ERP
$52m
December 2007
SolidDB
In-memory DBMS
IBM
€20m
November 2007: IBM returns to the application software business by buying Cognos
IBM confirmed longstanding rumors when it announced on November 12, 2007 that it was
to buy Cognos for $5bn cash, representing a modest nine percent premium on the already
takeover-speculation-boosted closing price on November 9. The deal closed at the end of
January 2008.
Unlike other recent acquisitions, there is little product overlap between the product ranges,
though IBM’s large services business with other BI vendors’ products may suffer. Also,
unlike other large BI acquisitions, there are few apparent synergies between the IBM and
Cognos software businesses — IBM has in recent years focused on infrastructure rather
than application software. Its earlier forays into BI have all been less than successful: AS,
IOC, Metaphor and DB2 OLAP Server all came to a sticky end, and it had looked like a
bruised IBM had turned its back on the BI software business.
This also represents a U-turn for Cognos. When the SAP acquisition of Business Objects was
announced barely a month earlier, Cognos instantly issued a detailed (obviously preplanned), bullish response:
“Cognos is now the only independent leader in the marketplace and we remain laser
focused on delivering the benefits of that independence to our customers. … This is a great
opportunity for Cognos. The market continues to want an independent, open and
interoperable Business Intelligence and Performance Management solution. In fact a
Goldman Sachs survey showed that more than 60% of CIOs preferred to purchase their
business intelligence from an independent vendor – not an application or database vendor.
… Cognos is committed to being an independent player and through our PM solutions
giving customers equal access to their entire infrastructure, all their applications and all of
their data sources. Customers have multiple ERP systems and warehouses like SAP, Oracle
E-Business, JD Edwards, Siebel, Peoplesoft, Microsoft, IBM, and Teradata, and they have
other data sources such as XML, Excel, and Blogs. And they also have a mixed bag of
infrastructure like Portals, Security systems and Application Servers and as they acquire
and merge with other companies these scenarios get even more complex. … Customers
need an independent performance layer that fits into their enterprise infrastructure and
that sits on top of all of their applications and data sources.”
IBM and Cognos have long had a productive business partnership, with technical and
services cooperation, and perhaps IBM was worried that if Cognos went the same way as
Hyperion and Business Objects, it could lose out on some of its remaining BI services
revenue. Certainly, this acquisition looks like a defensive knee jerk response to Oracle’s and
SAP’s large BI acquisitions earlier in 2007, though IBM claims otherwise. It is also believed
that IBM was an under-bidder for Hyperion and Business Objects (both of which also had
active IBM partnerships). And perhaps Cognos was more worried than it claimed about the
prospect of having to compete as an independent against Oracle, SAP and Microsoft?
Cognos becomes a new unit of IBM’s Information Management division focused on BI and
performance management. It will continue to be led by Rob Ashe, the current Cognos CEO,
reporting to Ambuj Goyal, General Manager, IBM Information Management. This appears to
be a similar strategy to that being adopted by SAP with Business Objects, whereas Oracle
has integrated Hyperion to a much greater extent. As IBM does not have an existing BI
software business, forced integration with other parts of IBM probably would not make
much sense.
After this, MicroStrategy and Actuate will be the last remaining public BI vendors, though
there remain two larger private BI vendors, SAS Institute and Information Builders.
One side effect of this and other large BI acquisitions is that BI now has much less visibility
on Wall Street. Not so long ago there was a thriving community of public BI vendors, which
kept financial analysts focused on this sector. Now, with only two medium-sized public BI
vendors left, this attention will wane.
October 2007: SAP abandons its organic growth strategy to acquire Business Objects
The wave of BI acquisitions in 2007 got a dramatic boost on October 7, when SAP
announced that it was acquiring Business Objects for €4.8bn ($6.8bn) cash (or $5.9bn net
of cash in hand). The price of €42 ($59.35) per share is an 18 percent premium on the
closing price of $50.27 on October 5. The deal completed in January 2008. This was the
largest BI acquisition ever, and was almost certainly another response to Oracle’s
acquisition of Hyperion earlier in the year.
The announcement came on the same day that Business Objects issued a profit warning for
the third quarter of 2007. It blamed weak license fees for the shortfall. Despite including
Cartesis, the quarterly license fees were expected to be only about $139m, compared to
$131.6m in Q3 2006.
SAP says it will keep Business Objects as a separate business unit under its existing CEO,
John Schwarz, who is expected to become a member of SAP's executive board. Bernard
Liautaud, chairman and founder of Business Objects, is to be proposed for SAP board
membership at the company's next shareholder meeting. In the meantime, he will serve as
an adviser to SAP CEO Henning Kagermann.
September 2007: CPM consolidation continues apace as Cognos buys Applix
Cognos announced on September 5, 2007 that it had reached a definitive agreement to
purchase Applix for $17.87 a share, or $339m ($306m net of Applix cash on hand). The deal
closed on October 26, 2007. This was the fourth CPM acquisition in 2007 (not counting
Pilot).
Applix had always seemed a takeover candidate: it was much too small to remain as a
public company in the Sarbanes-Oxley regulatory era, and was competing with companies
far larger than itself. But it was nevertheless one of the fastest growing BI vendors, and
TM1 is a well-respected OLAP server. Indeed, it is the only OLAP server to have grown its
market share faster than Microsoft Analysis Services.
Cognos had at one time been a major OLAP vendor, but it has lost its way. PowerPlay has
had little investment for the last few years, and Cognos 8 has not been seen as a strong
OLAP client for other vendors’ OLAP servers. The older Cognos financial applications were
also unsuccessful. Cognos has therefore had to resort to acquisition to re-establish its
presence, with Adaytum in 2003, Frango in 2004 and now Applix in 2007. It will be
interesting to see if TM1 continues to be marketed as a product in its own right in the long
run, or if it is absorbed into the Cognos 8 platform.
Cognos is keeping the TM1 and Executive Viewer brands and products for some time, but
will rapidly phase out the Applix name. TM1 is likely to be positioned as the Cognos tool for
financial performance analytics, with less emphasis on its planning capabilities, as this role
is assigned to Cognos Planning. A version of Cognos 8 that links directly to TM1 cubes is
likely in the second half of 2008. The Applix products, as well as Cognos Planning (the
former Adaytum) and Controller (the former Frango) will form a new Financial
Performance Management division. This will be run by the former Applix CEO.
Both Applix and Cognos are likely to be affected by Microsoft PerformancePoint, which was
also launched in September 2007. It is a low-priced, aggressively marketed competitor for
Cognos Planning and TM1, which will get a lot of attention. The first release is not fully
competitive functionally, but it may be adequate for many customers, and so is a threat to
all existing CPM products. This is likely to have been a trigger for the sudden wave of CPM
acquisitions in 2007.
April 2007: Business Objects adds to its PM collection with Cartesis
Business Objects announced on April 23, 2007 that it had agreed to buy Cartesis for €225m
(~$300m) in cash. The deal closed earlier than expected, on June 1, 2007. Business Objects
and Cartesis are both originally French companies, headquartered in Paris, though in
recent years, Business Objects’ focus and much of its management team has moved to
North America. Cartesis was much less successful in North America, and remained as a
mainly French company.
Although both Paris-based, the Cartesis and Business Objects headquarters are almost four
miles drive apart whereas, strangely enough, the former ALG Paris office is literally next
door to Cartesis, and overlooked by the Cartesis executive terrace. The Business Objects
and Cartesis main UK offices are also less than a mile apart as the crow flies, both in
Maidenhead, but in the US, they are at opposite ends of the country, in San Jose, CA and
Norwalk, CT. It is no coincidence that the latter location is very close to the former head
office of Hyperion Software, as the US branch of Cartesis was initially staffed mainly by exHyperion people (the same is true of OutlookSoft).
Business Objects was reluctant and late to join the performance management race, and
loudly derided Cognos when it acquired Adaytum. But after competitive pressure from
Cognos and Hyperion, which were able to persuade many customers that they should be
buying both BI and PM from the same vendor, Business Objects was forced to act. By then,
many of the more obvious acquisition candidates had already gone — for example,
Business Objects should probably have bought Adaytum, its then planning partner, rather
than letting Cognos snap it up in 2003, and it could probably have bought Cartesis in 2004
from PwC for a fraction of the €225m it is paying Cartesis’ VC owners now.
Instead, Business Objects bought two smaller, less well known PM companies: SRC in 2005
and ALG in 2006. Both SRC and ALG had planning products, as does Cartesis, thanks to its
acquisition of INEA in 2005. This puts Business Objects in the awkward position of owning
three acquired, incompatible planning products, each from a different country (something
that would not have happened had it purchased Adaytum in 2003 and Cartesis in 2004). At
the same time, Cartesis has been beefing up its front-end analytical capabilities using an
OEM version of Panorama NovaView, ironically replacing its unhappy former OEM use of
Crystal Analysis Pro. It will probably now end up with a descendent of that product as its
analytic front-end yet again.
April 2007: Oracle buys Hyperion Solutions for $3.3bn
In by far the biggest-ever BI consolidation, Oracle has acquired Hyperion Solutions for
$3.3bn cash, with the deal closing on April 19, 2007. By April 18, Oracle had purchased 91.3
percent of the outstanding shares for $52 per share. After the closing of the offer, the
purchase of the remaining shares became compulsory.
Hyperion itself was based on a series of mergers and acquisitions, bringing together
products that originated in at least a dozen separate companies (AppSource, Alcar, Arbor,
Brio, Decisioneering, IMRS, Pillar, Razza, Sapling, Sqribe, Tableau and Upstream), and in
Oracle, it has joined a BI/CPM stable that includes products from the former IRI Software,
PeopleSoft, nQuire (which became Siebel Analytics) and Oracle’s own Discoverer.
There is considerable overlap between these various BI products: for example, there are
several different relational reporting tools, and several OLAP servers. Clearly, not all will
survive, and it is Oracle’s home-grown BI tools and applications that are the weakest. But it
is likely that Oracle was most attracted to Hyperion by its market leadership in the faster
growing CPM space. It puts Oracle in a better position to compete with SAP’s existing SEM
CPM applications and Microsoft’s pending PerformancePoint. Previously, Oracle only had
the ancient Oracle Financial Analyzer (which dated back to the 1980s) and its unsuccessful
newer Enterprise Planning and Budgeting application. These are likely to be replaced by
the equivalent Hyperion products, just as Essbase is likely to become Oracle’s primary
OLAP server (despite Oracle’s claims that both Essbase and its unpopular own OLAP
Option will both continue into the future).
Ironically, Hyperion had spent the previous 18 months starting the integration of its many
tools into its new System 9 platform; now Oracle has to start this all over again, as it
attempts to rationalize and merge its messy range of overlapping BI and CPM tools, and
then integrate them with its other tools and applications. This could be a rough ride for
both Oracle’s products and their users. But after PeopleSoft, Siebel and a series of smaller
enterprise software acquisitions, Oracle certainly knows how to execute such deals.
February 2007: Pilot changes hands for the sixth time
Pilot Software was acquired by SAP in February 2007. Depending on how you count, this is
arguably the sixth time Pilot has changed hands.
Pilot Software had reappeared in the guise of Pilot Software Acquisition Corporation in
May 2002, a new company formed by members of the Pilot management team backed by
institutional investors. This reborn Pilot Software purchased Accrue’s Pilot and Hit List
software product lines, including related intellectual property, customer contracts and
other assets. Accrue received $1.5m in cash and retained rights to use the Pilot technology
within Accrue G2. John D’Albis transferred from Accrue to resume his old role as CTO of
Pilot Software, a role he continued to perform when SAP acquired the company in 2007.
Accrue had bought Pilot from Platinum Equity Holdings in August 2000 for approximately
$20m in stock. Before August 1997, Pilot was owned by Cognizant Corporation. Dun &
Bradstreet, Cognizant’s predecessor, had bought Pilot in November 1994, before which it
had been independent since it was formed as an EIS pioneer in 1983. In 1987, in another
all-paper deal, Pilot had acquired Thorn-EMI Computer Software, previously EPS
Consultants, which was formed in 1972. Today’s Essbase also had its roots in EPS’s FCS
product line.
2006
Date
Acquired company
Product type
Acquiring company
Product type
Price
January 2006
Performancesoft
Balanced Scorecard
Actuate
Reporting
$17m
January 2006
Similarity Systems
DQM
Informatica
DI
$55m
February 2006
FirstLogic
DQM
Business Objects
BI
$69m
March 2006
Geac
Planning, ERP
Extensity
BI
$1 bn
March 2006
Veridiem
Marketing Intelligence
SAS
BI
N/A
April 2006
ProClarity
Analysis
Microsoft
BI
$50m
April 2006
UpStream
DQM
Hyperion
BI
N/A
April 2006
Systems Union
BI, ERP
Extensity
BI
£237m
May 2006
Hummingbird
ETL, BI
Symphony Technology Group
CPM
$465m
May 2006
Unicorn
Metadata Repository
IBM
BI, DI, DW
N/A
June 2006
Solonde
DI
Sybase
DBMS
N/A
July 2006
Extensity
BI
Infor
ERP
N/A
August 2006
Sigma Dynamics
BAM
Oracle
DBMS, ERP, BI
N/A
September 2006
ALG
Planning
Business Objects
BI, DI
$56m
October 2006
Sunopsis
DI
Oracle
DBMS, ERP, BI
N/A
November 2006
Nsite
SaaS
Business Objects
BI, DI
N/A
December 2006
Itemfield
DI
Informatica
DI
$55m
April 2006: Microsoft gets more aggressive with BI front-end tools by acquiring ProClarity
On April 3, 2006, Microsoft announced that it had agreed to acquire the privately held
ProClarity. The price was not disclosed, but we speculate that it was close to or just below
$50m, which is lower than ProClarity had been seeking in 2005. The deal closed in May
2006. The OLAP Survey 6 found that ProClarity was the most widely used third party frontend for Analysis Services, which may be one of the reasons for this acquisition.
Unlike Microsoft’s three previous BI acquisitions, where Microsoft acquired just the
technology from very young companies, and not the companies themselves, this time
Microsoft emphasizes that it is buying the entire ProClarity organization and business. It
says it intends to build on all ProClarity’s strengths, including its technology, sales and
marketing, partner networks and future plans.
Unlike those previous acquisitions, ProClarity has a relatively mature product line, now on
its sixth major release, and some 1200 established customers. Microsoft will therefore be
keeping most of ProClarity’s products unchanged in the short term. The one exception is
the Java-based ProClarity Live Server, which will be withdrawn from the market, though
some of its capabilities are likely to surface in future Microsoft BI products.
As part of this continuity, the ProClarity organization will become a Microsoft subsidiary
and continue to be based in Boise, Idaho, and most of the management and employees are
expected to be retained. The ProClarity sales force is likely to be integrated into (or form
the nucleus of) Microsoft’s own growing BI sales and marketing organization. Microsoft
wants to be seen as a fully-fledged BI vendor, not just a large software company with some
random BI modules, and for this it needs some credible front-end tools, which ProClarity
provides. Previously, Microsoft was hard-put to compete for enterprise BI business without
the help of partners such as ProClarity.
Microsoft has not yet disclosed what will happen to the ProClarity name, nor the detailed
road map of how ProClarity’s products will fit into the Microsoft product line or how they
will be priced. But it is almost certain that they will remain as products in their own right,
and not just be bundled with any edition of Office 2007. Previous experience suggests that
Microsoft may reduce the prices and simplify the price structure. Microsoft will probably
present the ProClarity-derived products as suitable for high-end BI, whereas Excel’s
embedded BI capabilities will be aimed at mainstream users.
This move is bad news for other specialist front-end tools vendors for Analysis Services
such as Panorama, Targit and Temtec, as well as for the larger BI vendors, who were
previously able to shrug off Microsoft’s threat to their business because of the weakness of
the then Microsoft front-end tools. Microsoft will now be a much more credible one-stopshop for BI technologies, though it may attract less support from third party tools vendors
who will see it as more of a competitor than a partner. It is probably no coincidence that
two hitherto loyal Microsoft partners, Panorama and OutlookSoft, announced support for
SAP BW and Oracle, respectively, on the very day of Microsoft’s announcement.
An indirect consequence could be to accelerate the much-expected, but stalled,
consolidation in the BI industry. The larger independent BI vendors, now certain that they
will have to compete with Microsoft for an increasing proportion of their business, may feel
the need to fill any gaps in their product stacks, particularly if they had previously relied on
Microsoft products to perform such roles. Equally, many of the smaller specialist vendors
may feel that a long-term independent future is not a feasible option.
2005
Date
Acquired company
Product type
Acquiring company
Product type
Price
February 2005
Razza
DI, MDM
Hyperion
PM
N/A
March 2005
Ascential
DI
IBM
Middleware, DBMS
$1.1 bn
May 2005
ISDD
DI, EII
Sybase
DBMS
N/A
May 2005
Avaki
DI, EII
Sybase
DBMS
N/A
June 2005
INEA
Planning
Cartesis
BPM
$6-10m
July 2005
Evoke
DI, Data Profiling
Similarity Systems
Data Cleansing
N/A
July 2005
SRC
Planning
Business Objects
BI
$100m
July 2005
Advance Info Systems
BI
Cartesis
Planning & Consolidation
N/A
August 2005
Everstream
BI
Concurrent
On-Demand Technology
$15m
September 2005
DWL
DI, MDM
IBM
Middleware, DBMS
N/A
September 2005
Siebel
DI, MDM, BI
Oracle
ERP, DB, BI
October 2005
Medience
DI, EII
Business Objects
BI
N/A
October 2005
Infommersion
Data Visualization
Business Objects
BI
$40m
October 2005
Ambeo
Tracking & Security
Embarcadero
DI
$6m
December 2005
DecisionPoint
CPM, Data Modeling
NCR Teradata
DW
N/A
July 2005: Business Objects switches strategy and acquires SRC
Having previously derided Cognos for diversifying into planning and consolidation
applications, Business Objects reversed strategy and followed suit by acquiring SRC
Software. The purchase agreement was announced on July 20, 2005, and the price is
$100m cash. This is a high price to pay for a company with revenues of only about $26.5m
in 2004 and 135 employees, though SRC’s 2005 run rate was probably closer to $35m.
Business Objects expects to take a $5m charge on the conclusion of the deal.
This also adds complexity to Business Objects, as it has no previous experience developing,
selling, marketing and supporting financial applications (unlike its main competitors,
Cognos and Hyperion). This is one reason why Business Objects previously avoided
acquiring or developing products in this area — it preferred to remain focused purely on BI
(mainly meaning relational reporting, as its OLAP capabilities remain weak). Ironically,
SRC’s products had previously been distributed in Europe by Frango, now part of Cognos,
so many of the European SRC experts now work for Cognos rather than Business Objects.
This will make it harder for Business Objects to boost SRC sales in Europe, as it must do to
justify the high price it is paying.
With SRC being based in Portland, Oregon, Business Objects now has yet another
development center, in addition to those in Paris, San Jose, Vancouver and Bangalore. It
also has to embark on another round of integration, having just spent 18 months merging
the former Crystal and Business Objects product lines. Of course, Cognos and Hyperion are
also distracted by integration projects.
Once this deal concludes, Business Objects, Cognos and Hyperion will be competing across
the board, though unlike the other two, Business Objects does not offer an OLAP server
(apart from the discontinued Holos). Though they straddle the whole range, they each have
different strengths and weaknesses:
Business Objects is the leader in relational query and reporting, but a beginner in financial
applications such as planning and consolidation. It also has relatively strong ETL
capabilities.
Hyperion leads in financial applications and is strong in OLAP, but is weak in BI. It has no
ETL capabilities of its own.
Cognos is strong in both BI and financial applications, without leading either area. It has
integrated, but weak, ETL.
Other competitors, such as MicroStrategy, Cartesis and Applix have more specialized
offerings and can compete strongly for particular applications, but cannot offer the full
range of functionality that the largest enterprise deals require.
2004
Date
Acquired company
Product type
Acquiring company
Product type
Price
January 2004
Cartesis
Consolidation
Apax Partner
Venture Capital
N/A
March 2004
Avellino
DQM
Harte Hanks
DQM
N/A
April 2004
Trigo
MDM
IBM
Middleware, DBMS
N/A
May 2004
ActiveViews
Reporting
Microsoft
BI, DW
N/A
May 2004
Lasata
Reporting
Systems Union
ERP, BI
$18m
July 2004
Evoke
DQM
CSI
BI Consulting
N/A
July 2004
AlphaBlox
Analytic Apps
IBM
Middleware, DBMS
N/A
July 2004
QIQ
Dashboards
Hyperion
PM
N/A
July 2004
A2i
MDM
SAP
ERP, BI
N/A
August 2004
Frango
Legal Consolidation
Cognos
BI
$52m
August 2004
Group1
DQM
Pitney Bowes
Document Management
$321m
November 2004
IntelligentApps
Reporting
Sage
ERP
N/A
December 2004
iLytix
Reporting
SAP
ERP, BI
N/A
January 2004: PwC divests Cartesis
PwC has divested Cartesis, the French consolidation system vendor, to a venture capital
consortium led by Apax Partners Funds. This move was forced by the Sarbanes-Oxley rules
which were preventing corporations audited by PwC from doing business with Cartesis.
The other members of the consortium are Advent Venture Partners, CDP Capital
Technology Ventures and Partech International. The price was not disclosed. The effect of
Sarbanes-Oxley had been hurting Cartesis for some time, so it was widely rumored for
months that PwC had put it up for sale.
Following the divestment, announced on December 23 and completed in January 2004,
Cartesis is wholly owned by the VC consortium, with no management or employee
shareholdings. There is also expected to be an injection of new funds into Cartesis which
will help the company’s marketing efforts in the US and UK. The company’s management
and product strategy were not initially affected by the change of ownership, as Cartesis had
in any case been run on an arm’s length basis by PwC. Later, there were senior
management changes and the company acquired INEA in mid 2005.
2000 to 2003
Date
Acquired company
Product type
Acquiring company
Product type
Price
May 2000
DataFlux
DI, DQM
SAS
N/A
2001
Informix
DBMS
IBM
DBMS
N/A
2001
Maximal
Analysis
Analysis
Microsoft
DBMS
$15m
November 2001
Torrent
DI
Ascential
DI
$46m
March 2002
Vality
DQM
Ascential
DI
$92m
April 2002
MetaGenix
DQM
Ascential
DI
$5m
July 2002
Acta
DI
Business Objects
Reporting, Analysis
$62m
December 2002
Adaytum
Planning
Cognos
BI
$157m
April 2003
Sagent
DI
Group1
DQM
$17m
May 2003
Alcar Group
Financial Modelling
Hyperion
PM
N/A
June 2003
Comshare
Planning
GEAC
ERP
$52m
June 2003
OpRisk
Risk
SAS
BI, DW
N/A
July 2003
Crystal Decisions
Reporting
Business Objects
BI
$820m
July 2003
Brio
Reporting, Analysis
Hyperion
Planning, Consolidation
$142m
July 2003
Nimble
EII
Actuate
Reporting
$15m
August 2003
Mercator
EAI
Ascential
DI
$106m
September 2003
Striva
EAI
Informatica
BI
$62m
September 2003
Closedloop
Planning
Lawson
ERP
$4m
October 2003
MIS AG
Analysis
Systems Union
ERP
$40m
October 2003
MarketMax
Retail BI
SAS
BI, DW
N/A
October 2003
Actional Adapter
EAI
iWay
EAI, ETL
N/A
December 2003
Data Junction
DI
Pervasive
DBMS
$22m
December 2003
Data Distilleries
Data Mining
SPSS
Data Mining
$6m
December 2003
Human Inference
DI, DQM
Prime Technology Ventures
Venture Capital
N/A
December 2003
RiskAdvisory
Risk Management
SAS
BI, DW
N/A
October 2003: Systems Union buys majority stake in MIS AG
Following on from Geac and Lawson, Systems Union has bought a planning/OLAP software
and services company, MIS AG. This German company’s products include DecisionWare
(including Alea), onVision, Plain and DeltaMiner. Its sales are mainly in central Europe,
with efforts to expand in the US having failed.
The agreed bid is for €10 per share, valuing the company at €34.1m or just over $40m. MIS
was founded in 1988, went public in February 2000 at an offer price of €50, and was listed
on the Frankfurt exchange.
July 2003: Hyperion Solutions buys Brio
As part of the consolidation rush in the BI industry, Hyperion Solutions announced on July
23 that it was to buy the fading Brio Software. The deal closed in mid-October.
Brio had been struggling for some time and was unable to compete against Business
Objects, Cognos, Crystal and MicroStrategy so it is no surprise to see it being acquired.
Hyperion had often been rumored as the buyer, so this is also no surprise. Hyperion is
paying approximately $142m in another mixed cash/stock deal. The shrinking, loss-making
Brio had revenues of $101.8m in the year to June 2003.
Brio scored well as a product in The OLAP Survey 2 and The OLAP Survey 3. It was also the
top scoring client tool (judged in business terms) for Essbase in The OLAP Survey 3, even
more so than Hyperion’s own tools, so the fit does seem remarkably good. Ironically,
Crystal was the lowest scoring client for Essbase, despite being resold by Hyperion.
Hyperion is reselling Brio’s products on an OEM basis until the deal closes on October 16,
2003. The Brio brand is expected to be dropped immediately after the deal closes, though
the Intelligence product name is likely to continue. It is not yet clear what the future of SQR
will be.
This deal ended Hyperion’s hitherto moderately successful reseller relationship with
Crystal Decisions, which has itself been acquired by Business Objects. It also makes
Hyperion a direct competitor against Business Objects, as well as Cognos. Hyperion is now
one of the top three general purpose BI vendors, with revenues of about $600m,
comparable to Cognos but with slower organic growth.
Of all these takeovers, this probably has a better chance of working than most as
there is no overlap in the product lines
the companies are almost neighbors, with head offices only two miles apart, so there are no
geographic issues
Hyperion needs relational query and reporting in its solutions, and Brio is a better
technical fit than Crystal
there is no confusion about which management is in charge, and there is no doubt that Brio
needed to be acquired
Hyperion may well be more successful in selling Brio’s products than than the faltering
Brio had been
Hyperion has learned a lot of lessons after the disastrous merger five years earlier, and has
had several relatively successful small acquisitions since.
July 2003: Business Objects buys Crystal Decisions for $1.2bn
In the largest BI consolidation so far, Business Objects announced on July 18 2003 that it
was to buy its fast growing competitor, Crystal Decisions, for approximately $820m, based
on the July 17 BOBJ closing stock price ($300m in cash and 26.5m BOBJ shares). The deal
eventually closed on December 11, and the rise of the BOBJ stock price since July raised the
net value of the deal to $1.2bn, by far the largest BI acquisition to date.
Before the close, Business Objects had a market capitalization of $2.1bn, so it is paying
about 57 percent of its own pre-merger valuation for Crystal, a competing vendor about 59
percent of its size. The majority owner of Crystal Decisions, Silver Lake Partners, became
the largest shareholder in the enlarged Business Objects and will have board
representation but Bernard Liautaud, co-founder of Business Objects, remains chairman
and chief executive officer of the combined company.
For the twelve months ended March 2003, Crystal Decisions’ revenue was $270.6m (a
growth of 34 percent) while license fees grew 33 percent to $175m. In the same period,
Business Objects revenue was revenue $466m (a growth of 9.6 percent, including the
impact of acquiring Acta), while license fees fell 6 percent to $237m.
Crystal’s annual revenue rose to $287.4m in the year ending June 2003, a growth of 32
percent. Business Objects’ revenue for the same 12 months is expected to be about $483m,
a growth of about 11 percent, including the acquired Acta. In the quarter ending June 2003,
Crystal grew revenues 27 percent to $78.2m, while Business Objects’ revenue is estimated
at $128m, a growth of 15 percent, including Acta’s contribution. License fee growth is
expected to be much less.
The purchase price represents about 2.85 times Crystal’s trailing revenue (assuming that
the Business Objects stock price does not fall significantly), a generous ratio by current
standards, so Business Objects is paying a premium for the fast growing Crystal. Business
Objects says it hopes for annual pre-tax cost savings of at least $25m. The joint company
will have annual revenues of close to $800m, putting it well ahead of Cognos, the current
largest BI vendor, which has revenues approaching $600m. Business Objects says that the
combined company will be the largest BI vendor in all major geographies, though it also
claimed to be the largest BI vendor worldwide even before the merger, though this was
clearly not the case.
This deal has relatively little effect in the OLAP market, where Crystal’s share was minimal,
but will have a much bigger impact on the reporting market, where both vendors are
strong.
It had previously been assumed that Crystal, previously part of Seagate Technologies, was
aiming for an IPO, but its future was threatened by the new Microsoft Reporting Services
bundled add-on to SQL Server, as well as new reporting products from Cognos and
MicroStrategy. This might be regarded as a defensive move on both sides to avoid
Microsoft’s threat to Crystal’s core reporting market and Cognos’ increasing strength
against Business Objects.
If so, it would have parallels with the 1998 merger of Arbor and Hyperion Software, which
is believed to have been triggered by the then imminent release of Microsoft OLAP Services
which was bundled with SQL Server 7. That merger proved to be very difficult, in part
because of the cultural difficulties between an east and a west coast company. As with this
new merger, that one involved a fast-growing technology company threatened by a new
Microsoft SQL Server bundled add-on merging with a larger competitor whose growth had
stalled.
Crystal is based in Vancouver, Canada, while Business Objects is technically based in Paris,
though most of the executive management is now in San Jose, California. The merged
company will have development groups in at least eight locations in Canada, France, India,
the UK and the US, which will make it hard to improve development productivity, already a
problem for Business Objects.
There is a definite overlap in the Business Objects and Crystal product lines, and both have
large user bases whose need for compatible upgrades will make it hard to integrate the
products seamlessly. Consequently, both brands will continue, though Business Objects
hopes to reduce the significant product overlap in the future. It plans to have a single sales
force selling all products. Both vendors also have a large number of partners and resellers
and there is likely to be channel conflict among some of these. Crystal has 1700 employees,
mainly in the US, Canada and the UK; the merged company will have about 3850
employees.
June 2003: Geac buys Comshare
The Canadian ERP vendor Geac announced on June 23, 2003 that it was buying Comshare,
for $52m in cash. The deal closed in mid-August.
Comshare, the longest established BI vendor, was formed in 1966 and had revenues of
$58.3m in the year ending March 2003. Geac is buying Comshare for its MPC product, the
development and marketing of which will continue under the new ownership. However,
the tarnished Comshare brand is expected to be dropped soon.
Comshare’s poor long-term financial trend contributed to the low price paid by Geac.
Although Comshare remained an independent company at the end of the June quarter and
fiscal year, no results were released for the quarter.
Geac sees good potential for selling MPC into its large customer base, but will also continue
marketing it to new, non-Geac customers. Such customers may actually be more inclined to
buy it from Geac than they were from Comshare, given Comshare’s consistently poor
financial performance, so this could be a rare takeover that actually increases the sales of
the acquired vendor’s products. However, it is far from clear that this is actually happening.
There are a surprising number of parallels between this deal and the acquisition of
Adaytum by Cognos a few months earlier:
Cognos and Geac are both Canadian and were of similar size before these acquisitions. Both
also had CEOs with British roots, though Geac’s left before the deal closed and Cognos CEO
Zambonini has also announced his retirement, though he will continue as chairman.
Comshare and Adaytum had almost identical revenues (of about $60m), though Adaytum’s
were growing rapidly and Comshare’s were flat or falling.
Cognos paid more than three times as much for Adaytum as Geac paid for Comshare.
Both deals were for cash.
Both Adaytum and Comshare marketed CPM software.
In both cases, the acquired company’s name disappeared.
December 2002: Cognos buys Adaytum
Like other private companies, Adaytum was not routinely obliged to release financial
figures, but the data in this chart was obtained from the abortive S-1/A from October 2000.
Subsequently, Adaytum released occasional reports that showed that its revenue had risen
to $51.2m in calendar 2001; the company was still making losses but the level was not
disclosed. The FY2002 revenue was $61.2m.
In the quarter ending September 2002, Adaytum’s revenue was $17.0m, a 26 percent
increase over the same period a year earlier. In contrast, in the quarter ending November
2002, Cognos itself had analytic applications revenue of $10.4m, a growth of 68 percent
year over year. In addition, Adaytum reported that it achieved an operating profit margin
(before non-cash charges) of 11 percent, positive net income, and positive cash flow —
possibly the first positive net earnings for several years.
For the first nine months of 2002, Adaytum’s total revenues were $42.7m, a 15 percent
growth on 2001. This is not a significantly higher growth than Cognos’s own 13.4 percent
increase in 8.5 times-higher BI revenues in the March-November 2002 period.
Cognos announced on December 19, 2002, that it was acquiring Adaytum Software, and the
transaction closed on 13 January 2003. The final consideration was $157.1m, slightly lower
than the $160m initially announced. Cognos views this as a business, not just a technology
acquisition, and hopes to maintain Adaytum’s high growth rate, using Adaytum’s existing
sales and marketing machine. It views this as justifying the high price paid — the
technology alone would not be so valuable to Cognos, which already had products that
overlapped all of Adaytum’s.
Adaytum had been trying to go public since August 7, 2000, when it filed its S-1 form. A
second revised S-1/A was filed in October the same year. However, with the subsequent
drop in the market, this IPO was repeatedly deferred, and the cash-burning company had
to raise yet more private capital of $7.4m in June 2001 and $11.1m in May 2002 from its
original VCs (including St. Paul Venture Capital, Accenture Technology Ventures, 3i Group,
JPMorgan Chase H&Q, and Dorsey & Whitney Ventures). The company had announced a
previous round $24m of VC funding in September 2000 and several smaller amounts
before that.
The IPO was seeking to raise approximately $50m (already reduced from the $63m in the
original S-1), about 50 percent more than other OLAP IPOs, of which there have been none
for a while. It said that it hoped to sell 5m shares at an estimated price of $9-$11. The filing
shows that the company had been making rapidly mounting losses. In January 2000, the
company made a number of layoffs, as part of a cost control program.
This acquisition has been challenging for Cognos. There is a lot of overlap between the two
companies’ products, so buying Adaytum does not take Cognos into any new markets,
though it does significantly strengthen its offering in some areas. With Cognos
Consolidation (the former LEX2000, acquired by Cognos in January 1999) and new
Planning product, Cognos already offered budgeting, planning, reporting and financial
consolidation, plus its other reporting tools and applications — in fact, a wider range of
analytical financial capabilities than Adaytum. Subsequently, Cognos acquired Frango in
October 2004, which is expected to replace the Lex-based Cognos Consolidation, so Cognos
will have replaced both of its financial applications in quick succession.
Both Adaytum and Cognos had financial product lines that included very old APL-based
modules (dating back at least 20 years) as well as more modern client/server and Webbased products, and each was working on integrating their existing sets of products; now
there are twice as many integration issues to tackle. Even the APL-based modules used
different variants of APL. Obviously, Cognos immediately abandoned Adaytum’s use of
BusinessObjects for reporting, substituting PowerPlay in the role (including providing free
Series 7 PowerPlay licenses to maintenance-paying Adaytum users of BusinessObjects
reporting). Cognos only supported existing BusinessObjects usage for 90 days; after that,
existing Adaytum users who wished to continue using BusinessObjects for reporting had to
get support from Business Objects directly.
The recently-introduced, and promising, Cognos Planning was immediately killed off in
favor of Adaytum, and Cognos Finance is being integrated with Adaytum’s products.
Cognos is also integrating the ensemble with its Series 7 products, though this will
probably not be completed until at least 2006.
Both companies had development groups in the US, UK and Canada, but in different cities
in each case, so it is difficult to integrate the respective development organizations, and
there were some casualties. And Cognos paid a high price — 2.8 times trailing revenues —
for the only recently and barely profitable Adaytum, so it will have to work hard to make
financial sense of this risky move.
Cognos has acquired a number of very small companies in the past, but it paid about twice
as much for Adaytum as for all the others combined. The previous acquisitions were of
small technology companies which did not disrupt the Cognos organization, and whether
they succeeded or failed, were no threat to Cognos. This was the first acquisition that has
had a real, visible impact on all parts of the organization and which involved the acquisition
of a significant installed customer base and operational sales force that had to be
integrated with Cognos’s existing sales force. It was also the first that caused real product
overlap. If Cognos succeeds, it will be the first relatively large and successful BI acquisition;
if it fails, it will join a long list of failed BI acquisitions.
Clearly, Cognos views the risks and high cost as worthwhile in order to strengthen its CPM
positioning, with Hyperion Solutions being the main target. But even combining Adaytum
with Cognos Finance and Metrics Manager, Cognos still has much smaller financial
applications revenues than Hyperion, though it has overtaken Cartesis (Adaytum’s former
partner) to become the clear number two in the segment. In the first year after the
acquisition, the former Adaytum’s growth rate dropped sharply, though they began to grow
strongly again at the end of 2003.
July 2002: Business Objects buys Acta for $65m
Business Objects has bought Acta, the ETL vendor best known for its ability to extract data
from SAP R3, for a generous $65m in cash. The agreed deal was announced on July 9 and
closed in late August 2002. This move puts the Business Objects technology stack in direct
opposition to those from Cognos and Informatica, and to a lesser extent, Hyperion (with its
Sagent and Crystal OEM arrangements). In each case, the vendors offer ETL technology to
extract data from ERP and CRP applications, a pre-built data model, BI tools and a suite of
analytical applications to present and analyze the data. Business Objects makes the point
that, uniquely, each layer in its stack is composed of recognized best of breed components.
With the others, at least one of the layers is much weaker. Business Objects will not be
competing in the general ETL segment, and will use Acta as an integrated part of its
analytical applications. Acta’s Mountain View remaining employees have moved to
Business Objects’ US head office in San Jose, where its application framework is also
developed.
Before 2000
Date
Company acquired
Product
Price
Acquiring company
1994
Pilot
LightShip
~$28m
Dun & Bradstreet
1994
Info-Innov
Media
Speedware
1995
IOC
Track
DecisionWorks
1995
IRI Software
Express
$100m
Oracle
1995
Soft Systems
Data-Vision
$5.2m
IQ Software
1995
STG
MetaCube
$16.5m
Informix
1995
Prodea
Beacon
$36m
Platinum Technology
1996
Holistic Systems
Holos
$84m
Seagate Software
1996
Sinper
TM1
$11m
Applix
1996
Panorama
relaunched as OLAP Services
~$15m
Microsoft
1997
Pilot Software
~$5m
Platinum Equity Holdings
1997
Andyne
PaBLO
Hummingbird
1997
AppSource
WIRED for OLAP
$6.7m
Arbor Software
1998
Hyperion Software
Enterprise; Pillar
$600m
Arbor Software immediately renamed to Hyperion Solutions
1998
IQ Software
Data-Vision
$36m
Information Advantage
1999
SQRIBE
$250m
Brio Technology (later Software)
1999
Sapling
$15.5m
Hyperion Solutions
1999
Cartesis
Carat
N/A
PWC
1999
Platinum Technology
InfoBeacon (DecisionBase)
N/A
CA
1999
Information Advantage
MyEureka!
$168m
Sterling
1999
Next Action Technology
AnswerSets (Set Analyzer)
$8m
Business Objects
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