Documens Boss

2010 is just days old and already we have the news that IBM is buying business process management company Lombardi, then hot on the heels of that news Progress Software has announced it is buying fellow BPM firm Savvion.  The activity Document Boss saw towards the end of 2009 with investigations and discussions taking place indicate 2010 could be a busy year for acquisitions.
 
Savvion is a privately held software company based in Santa Clara, California. Progress is buying the firm for around $49 million, net of cash acquired.
Savvion has15 years of market experience. The company offers what Progress calls a comprehensive, standards-based BPM suite that helps around 300 of the world's companies - including 24 of the 'Fortune 100' - automate and improve critical business processes
 
Progress Software Corporation (NASDAQ: PRGS), announced today at its Global Field Operations Conference the acquisition of Savvion Inc.
 
Paul Carman - Document Boss, earlier today made some interesting observations on the acquisition:

 
"The acquisition of Savvion by Progress Software is just another example of how core BPM is becoming mainstream and in fact part of an overall Enterprise solution. It simply validates the fact that BPM solutions do not stand alone in an Enterprise but combined with other core features and functionality they can help improve an organizations overall responsiveness and efficiency.
 
Over the past years, we have seen Staffware acquired by Tibco, Fuego acquired by BEA, who then was acquired by Oracle, and many other BPM players.  Recently, with the IBM acquisition of Lombardi, we are simply seeing this trend continue. We predict the acquisition pace to continue throughout 2010. The only question is who will be next! Appian seems to be very well positioned here and could be of interest to a number of companies both in the US and in the rest of the world. Other key independents like Ultimus, Pegasystems and Metastorm also could be interesting targets.
 
The Progress acquisition of Savvion seems to be a very good play and a great fit! Progress did not have a BPM solution in their product line, and the Savvion Suite seems to fit well into both the Progress product line and into their overall business strategy. This addition, combined with Progress’s Business Event Processing, Business Transaction Assurance, and their Integration portfolio, provide users with a new powerful ability to monitor and change key processes in a real time global environment. In addition, the acquisition is effective almost immediately.
 
Some have asked why would Savvion sell to Progress now?  Why not wait until the economy valuations improve and Savvion’s performance improves? It seems the BPM space has been challenging over the last year. While Savvion has finally generated a profit over the last quarters, it has come at a cost. Over the last years, Savvion has cut costs, affecting both their marketing and sales organizations. They clearly saw a very competitive environment for organic growth, and felt an acquisition could be the best path.  In addition, there is little doubt that their investors were a key factor, and possibly had grown tired of watching Savvion struggle to grow and achieve their long-term goals. Up until last year, the investors were still probably hoping for a positive IPO environment for Savvion.  However, the economic issues of 2009 helped drive them towards this acquisition exit.”