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Software AG does it again with IDS Scheer
Wednesday, July 15, 2009 by admin
So (as usual) I’m far from being the first BPM market/tech commentator to write something on Software AG’s bid for IDS-Scheer; however there’s a few points I’d like to drop into the mix.
I have to say I was a little surprised at the acquisition. As I tweeted at the time, I kind of expected IDS Scheer to continue to bump along as an independent, privately-held company (rather in the vein of SAS) – after all, it’s managed fine for many, many years doing just that. At least, I suppose I expected that if it were bought, it would be SAP doing the buying. (SAP has been a close partner of IDS Scheer for some time, and they share much of the same cultural DNA when it comes to process and architecture).
Still, Software AG has surprised me before. I’ll happily admit that I was initially surprised and sceptical about Software AG’s purchase of webMethods back in 2007. As I said at the time:
Software AG is a company with a long history as a middleware company, but it’s not a glorious one… this will be a difficult integration to pull off.
But Software AG proved me wrong – it consistently delivered on its integration plans and built a new larger company with a very strong combination of cultures. Having seen the company do it right with webMethods, I’ve little doubt that it can do the same with IDS Scheer.
From a high-level product coverage viewpoint the acquisition does make a lot of sense. IDS Scheer brings established, sophisticated enterprise architecture and business process analysis tools; Software AG has the “execution” pieces that can in theory take the output of such tools and help you build IT systems that reflect your to-be models.
From a strategic point of view there’s another key benefit, and that’s the ability to get access to a big hunk of the SAP buying/influencing community, due to the close relationship between IDS Scheer and SAP. webMethods was here before of course: SAP used to resell a custom-extended version of webMethods’ Integration Server as SAP Business Connector. The development of SAP XI/NetWeaver put paid to a lot of that effort, though, as SAP realised that it shouldn’t be relying on a third party for such a key piece of its integration story.
But the addition of IDS Scheer isn’t an obvious “1 + 1 = 3″ story though. As Forrester’s John Rymer tweeted:
IDS Scheer is “big BPM” (complex, expensive).
By contrast, Software AG had already done a lot of work to take its BPMS (that process “execution” platform, together with associated design tools) and make it easier to consume. Importantly, in common with a number of other BPM technology vendors, it had already started to invest in technology which would “democratise” access to BPM. AlignSpace is about cheaply/freely enabling groups of business and technical people to come together to collaboratively explore and tackle process problems, opportunities, and improvements – whereas ARIS has historically really been about precisely the opposite: expensive tools for highly-trained process and architecture specialists. It has a very rich set of tools, but it also demands that you make a considerable investment (not just in terms of purchase price, but also in terms of skills and ideas) to get the best from it. Think of it as cathedral vs bazaar if you like, applied to the problem of business process improvement.
Can you tell a story about BPM that requires you to pitch the cathedral and the bazaar at the same time? In the long run, I’m not sure.
It’s perhaps worth mentioning that in purchasing IDS Scheer, Software AG is kind of echoing what IBM did when it bought Telelogic. IBM, too, had already started to go down the route of building a BPM platform that allowed multiple groups to get involved in BPM work in an open, collaborative way (see BPM BlueWorks); and then it bought a company with “high architecture” tools with non-trivial overlap (and a cultural mismatch). The outcome of this piece of the acquisition puzzle is still an open question for IBM/Telelogic; and it could give Software AG a headache, too.
Still, in the immediate term, this acquisition shouldn’t give customers of either Software AG or IDS Scheer cause for concern. In the short term, the ARIS tools are likely to be kept pretty separate from the rest of the Software AG portfolio.
The concern is probably more likely to be in the minds of the other players who’ve historically relied on IDS Scheer for parts of their BPM stories: notably TIBCO, SAP, and Oracle. ARIS might be kept at arms’ length by Software AG for a short while, but that can’t last forever.
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