January Software Sales Sees EMC Purchase Grid Capabilities

January is that time of year in many parts of the world when retailers hold sales to attract customers to their stores. This January we have witnessed a positive plethora of ISV’s being purchased. This is yet another indication that the software industry is now in a state where the large get ever larger and the smaller vendors are being integrated into larger offerings.

Of the announcements made thus far this year, four stand out; namely EMC acquiring Internosis and the Information Grid software from Acxiom, Quest Software’s acquisition of AfterMail and the release from CA of its intention to acquire Wily Technology. Not a bad start to the year. These moves are all significant and I shall take a brief look at each in turn. I shall cover the CA and Quest acquisitions in a later article.

The acquisition by EMC of Internosis, Inc. is relatively straightforward. Internosis is a privately held North American-based IT services organization working in the areas of application development, IT infrastructure and managed services for Microsoft environments. The company, headquartered in Greenbelt, Maryland, boasts around 250 IT service professionals and specialises in the integration of Microsoft technologies within the enterprise. Internosis will become the Microsoft Solutions Practice of EMC and will add significant depth and new capabilities to EMC’s rapidly growing professional services business, especially as it applies to helping customers build ILM (Information Lifecycle Management) solutions for their expanding Microsoft environments.

The second EMC development sees the company partner with Acxiom Corporation to develop and market an information grid solution to customers as a hosted offering. The deal also sees EMC acquire the Information Grid software from Acxiom for around $30 million. This is an altogether more interesting development and illustrates just how seriously EMC is building out its software offerings. Whilst the initial offering will be hosted by Acxiom, the plan is to build on the acquired information grid software, EMC’s existing portfolio along with assistance and services from Acxiom eventually to supply a product-based information grid solution for customers to deploy within their own enterprises.

This marks a further extension in the potential reach of EMC software into a new area for the company, similar in some respects to its acquisition of VMware. This is a move that should be watched closely to see what new information grid solutions EMC eventually brings to market. In particular it will be worth keeping track of the “broad range of applications and industry sector” solutions for which EMC is promising to supply information grid offerings.

EMC is very determined in its desire to build an extensive array of software and services solutions. These moves indicate that it will not just be in the more obvious, traditional storage related areas, in which EMC plans to construct software solutions. It will be fascinating to see where its next moves lie.