Monday, March 12, 2007

Vitria is now private; Iona buys C24; Informatica Integration on demand

As I noted in October, Vitria is being taken private by its founders. Shareholders have now approved, and the transaction closed on 7th March.

This marks the end of a rollercoaster ride on NASDAQ (and by rollercoaster I mean there was a sharp climb at the beginning, but after a series of humps, bumps and loops you end up right back on the ground). Vitria's results over the last three years show everything gradually declining - revenue, assets, license sales. One positive - losses have also been reduced. Can Chang and Skeen turn the ship around, or is this just another step towards the sunset retirement home for distressed software companies?

Meanwhile Iona has picked up (London) City specialist integration boutique C24 for an undisclosed price. Given C24's small size - 12 employees - there should be no major digestion problem for Iona as long as C24's customers are kept sweet. Good luck to the C24 guys, a couple of whom I met while I was at SpiritSoft.

Finally, Informatica has launched the "first and only" on-demand data integration service. The "On Demand Data Replicator" - yours free for 30 days, and $1500/month from then on - is initially aimed at Salesforce.com customers; SaaS vendors like RightNow and NetSuite are next in line. The integration is (I guess) intended to be from your internal apps to your hosted apps, and vice versa.

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