Heads up for ECM, BPM & BPO software executives globally
Lombardi in to the Big Blue
17 December 2009IBM has announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Lombardi, a privately held software company based in Austin, Texas. Financial terms were not disclosed. Lombardi, a provider of Business Process Management (BPM) software and services.
Lombardi has customer relationships in the financial services, government, healthcare, insurance, life sciences, manufacturing, retail, and telecommunications industries.
So what does this mean for Lombardi and the BPM market what impact will it have? Lombardi has been an organisation that I have watched for quite a few years. They have done well to build from nothing a reasonable sized company in this sector. The executives now they have sold to IBM for an undisclosed amount, unless they have made a big mistake in their M&A process, should feel rightly proud of themselves. However, what now?
IBM makes so many acquisitions a year do they really have a master plan that will work for Lombardi moving forward?? IBM now has 3 BPM stacks, Lombardi, Websphere and FileNet adding to the complexity of their solution. Surely IBM BlueWorks and Lombardi Blueprints will have to be shall we say "rationalised" is that the polite term? Some very focused and creative integration will be required if Lombardi are not about to sale off into the distance and out of sight in the big deep blue.