Adobe Systems plans to acquire Web content management software provider Day Software for $240 million.
In a move to beef up its ongoing play for the attention and purse strings of
enterprise customers, Adobe Systems has announced plans to acquire Web content
management software provider Day Software for $240 million.
In a press release announcing the acquisition, Adobe said its acquisition of
Day will strengthen the company's enterprise software solutions with market-leading
Web content management (WCM), digital asset management and social collaboration
offerings. This acquisition represents a significant market opportunity for
Adobe to help organizations transform themselves by enabling them to create,
manage, distribute and monetize content while optimizing the Web experience for
their customers, Adobe said.
"The big driver here from a strategic standpoint is that the acquisition
is an opportunity for us to upgrade our customer experience management,"
said Erik Larson, senior director of product management at Adobe, in an
interview with eWEEK.
Larson said the acquisition represents an expansion of Adobe's strategy to
deepen its enterprise and Web customer experience offerings, building on its
$1.8
billion acquisition of Omniture last summer. The Day Software
acquisition strengthens Adobe's ability to help companies not only create,
manage and distribute digital content, but also monetize it and optimize Web
experiences, he said.
"As businesses move more customer experiences to the Web, and
particularly are using more smartphones to access the Web, we see the Web
moving from a marketing and informational tool to more of a transaction
environment," Larson said.
Day's Web solutions combined with Adobe's existing enterprise portfolio will
enable customers to better integrate their global Web presence and business
applications, unlocking value across their marketing, sales and service
processes. In addition, Day customers will be able to leverage more
interactive application and document capabilities from Adobe AIR,
Adobe Flash, Flex, Adobe LiveCycle and PDF. The combination of Day and
Adobe will help customers realize the full potential of the Web in acquiring,
servicing and retaining their customers, without disrupting their existing IT
infrastructures, Larson said.
"Today with LiveCycle and Omniture, we can support the development of
enterprise applications and integrate them into back-end systems," he
said.
"Adobe's acquisition of Day represents a key milestone in our efforts
toward delivering best-in-class customer experience management solutions to
enterprises and governments worldwide," said Rob Tarkoff, senior vice
president and general manager of Digital Enterprise Solutions at Adobe, in a
statement. "With the addition of Day to our enterprise portfolio, we will
be able to enhance the value of our offering and deliver on our vision of the Web
as the hub of customer interaction."
"Organizations around the globe have recognized the importance of the
online and mobile channel and turned to Day as their enterprise standard for
next-generation Web content management," said Erik Hansen, CEO
of Day Software, in a statement. "We are excited to join Adobe and combine
our expertise in WCM with technologies that create and deliver rich online and
offline experiences leveraging the ubiquity of Flash and PDF. We believe this
is a winning combination for both Adobe and Day customers."
As part of the expected integration of the two companies, Day will operate
as a product line within Adobe's Digital Enterprise Solutions Business Unit.
Day CEO Erik Hansen will join Adobe
reporting directly to Tarkoff.
"For us, this is a great validation and endorsement of what we've done
on both the business side-with our rapid growth-as well as on the technology
side," said David Neuscheler, CTO of
Day Software, in an interview with eWEEK. "What we bring is a state-of-the-art
Web 2.0 Web content management platform."
Following completion of the acquisition, the next step will involve
integrating Adobe's technology with Day's.
Larson said Day Software's technology vision aligns closely with Adobe's. "Beyond
that, their use of Java, their pioneering of OSGI and their use of Spring
totally gel with our plans. So many things are going to be easier than they
would have been back in the old J2EE [Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition]
days."
Spring is a key connection. Adobe has some key relationships with SpringSource
involving the Spring Framework. Indeed, Adobe has for some time been working
with SpringSource to simplify the development and deployment of rich enterprise
Java applications through a collaboration that provides integration between the
Adobe Flash and SpringSource platforms. This collaboration makes it easy for
Java developers to create enterprise-class rich Internet applications (RIAs)
using Adobe Flex software, a cornerstone of the Adobe Flash Platform, and
Spring, which has become the de facto standard for enterprise Java.
"There are so many synergies," Neuscheler said of Adobe's and Day
Software's technology visions. "I have hardly ever seen two product stacks
that work so well together."
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