Business intelligence software leader Business Objects agreed to buy
Firstlogic, which sells data-quality management software and services,
for $69 million in cash.
FirstLogic is a private company with 2005 revenues of $50 million and 6,000
customers worldwide.
The company’s software and services assess data and clean it up so that it
can be turned into accurate information. These tools can help companies meet
federal compliance regulations for managing information.
Business Objects specializes in business intelligence software that helps
corporations determine how their business operations are functioning and graphically renders the data.
The
software can tell a business manager how his sales staff is performing, for
example, among other key performance metrics.
The company also has some data-integration offerings, and FirstLogic will
help the France-based company purify the data, making it more accurate and
relevant, for customers.
Business Objects CEO John Schwarz said in a statement information management
will play a vital role in the business-intelligence market because companies
keep adding new data sources and need some way to extract important
information from them in real time.
FirstLogic’s Information Quality Suite and IQ8 technology, along with
Business Objects’ integration and performance management software, can help
customers meet mounting data challenges and comply with guidelines like
Sarbanes-Oxley and HIPAA.
The purchase is the second such data-quality bid within a month. In late
January, Informatica agreed to acquire
Dublin, Ireland-based Similarity for $55 million in cash.
IBM made the blockbuster buy in this space a year ago when it purchased Ascential Software for $1.1 billion.
IBM is using Ascential’s software in
its data-management unit to fashion a service-oriented architecture (SOA)
portfolio for customers.
Since buying
reporting powerhouse Crystal Decisions a couple of years ago, Business
Objects has been acquiring companies to flesh out its software portfolio.
Last summer, the company acquired
financial planning software maker SRC Software for $100 million in cash.
