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August 21, 2007
Acquisitions, Acquisitions everywhere
Well, I just got back from a well earned vacation in Verges, France (don't even bother trying to find it on the map, there are more cows there than people... literally) and to my surprise, there has been a lot of acquisition activity in the data management space.
First off, Princeton Softech got acquired by IBM. Princeton has software for data archiving and data de-identification. http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/08/03/IBM-to-buy-Princeton-Softech_1.html
Then, EMC acquired acquired Tablus, which is the sensitive content identification and protection business. Their product identifies sensitive data in emails and files. They don't have capabilities in the structured data arena.
So after a few years of quiet in the early stage acquisition market, we are seeing the giants wake up again using the free market and small firms to take the risk in emerging markets, prove out the markets, then snapping them up.
That is good news after what I would consider a dry spell for data management. Although there have been acquisitions in this space, they were either of medium sized public companies, like IBM buying Ascential, or the purchase of also rans in the industry just trying to get some kind of exit.
Anyway, I like both of these companies (full disclosure, my company, Exeros, has partnerships with both of them) as they have great products, provide great value in new and emerging markets and they both have great teams.
Only time will tell if the data management market continues to serve up more acquistions or were these two very closely timed acquisition merely just a coincidence.
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Posted by Todd Goldman at 4:15 PM | Comments (0)
