Mergers, Acquisitions, And Partnerships: April 2011 Update

Topics: Learning Excellence, Partnerships

Overview

Mergers, Acquisitions, and Partnership: April 2011 Update

For the month of April, CorpU analysts and researchers have identified five mergers, acquisitions, and partnerships worthy of comment from the news, including SuccessFactors' acquisition of Plateau, Peopleclick Authoria's acquisition of Aquire, Jive's acquisition of Proximal Labs, Desire2Learn's acquisition of Captual, and Polycom’s acquisition of Accordent.

Contents:

• Peopleclick Authoria Acquires Analytics and Modeling Capabilities
• Jive Acquires Proximal Labs
• Desire2Learn to Offer Presentation Capture and Webcasting Solutions
• Polycom Acquires Accordent Technologies
• SuccessFactors Acquires Plateau

Peopleclick Authoria Acquired Analytics and Modeling Capabilities

Peopleclick Authoria, a provider of talent management software solutions, acquired workforce planning and analytics solutions provider Aquire on 4^th March 2011. This acquisition brings a collaboration solution driven by visualization, analytics and modeling capabilities that align the planning initiatives and strategic objectives of the executive team, line management and workforce.

Founded in 1994, Aquire provides workforce planning and analytics solutions, including organizational charting and analytics for  talent visualization, succession planning, data integrity and more. More than 2,700 organizations in 125 countries rely on Aquire solutions to manage data for 10 million working professionals worldwide.

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Jive Acquires Proximal Labs

Jive, a provider of social business applications, acquired Proximal Labs in April 2011. Jive's social business application operates over 'big data' to filter information coming into the enterprise from both internal and external systems. The interface analyzes data and user behavior— including their interests, work and the people with whom they collaborate — producing an enterprise social graph.

Founded in 2010, Proximal Labs develops adaptive applications that anticipate and target user needs and create community engagement. These smart apps include contextual personalized recommendations, smart FAQs, and personalized searches.

Proximal's technology will augment Jive’s ability to deliver the value of the enterprise social graph by:

• Providing insight into the interconnected web of employees, customers and partners;
• Amplifying the existing Jive intelligence engine;
• Enhancing search to cover large-scale external and internal data to deliver personalized results;
• Heightening analytics capabilities to provide rich data on the expertise and work of individuals and teams as well as customers and partners;
• Augmenting the capabilities of Jive social media engagement to allow richer relevance and deeper correlation of information from the social web; and
• Measuring productivity and employee satisfaction by assessing key operational criteria such as: the amount of work focused on delivering business objectives; the effectiveness of team collaboration; and employee sentiment related to their work and the company

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Desire2Learn to Offer Presentation Capture and Webcasting Solutions

Desire2Learn, a provider of learning systems, acquired Captual Technologies. This acquisition enables Desire2Learn to provide presentation capture and webcasting solutions for rich media presentations live or on-demand, with options for cloud-based hosting. Presentations can include video, slides, screen and peripheral sharing, and can incorporate digital whiteboards and document cameras, as well as viewer chats and comments. This scalable solution allows for collaboration and focus, enabling persistent access to rich media.

Founded in 2008, Captual Technologies developed ePresence, a webcasting solution that enables user live-streaming and on-demand presentations with fully synchronized video and desktop/slides.

Polycom Acquired Accordent Technologies

Polycom, a provider of unified communications solutions, acquired Accordent Technologies to expand its recording and streaming solutions. Founded in 1990, Polycom offers telepresence, video, and voice solutions that help users to connect and collaborate from their desktops, meeting rooms, classrooms, and mobile settings. Polycom will be integrating their open standards UC Intelligent Core and UC endpoints with Accordent's open standards video content management solution. Accordent further differentiates Polycom’s deep native integration with Microsoft Lync and SharePoint.

Accordent Technologies provides enterprise video management solutions that support centrally managed digital media assets such as live webcasts, automated rich media webcasting, streaming extensions to video conferences, and user-generated content from the desktop.

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SuccessFactors Acquires Plateau

SuccessFactors, a provider of cloud-based performance management and human capital management systems, has acquired Plateau for $290 million. Plateau is a provider of SaaS-based Talent Management software. SuccessFactors plans to integrate Plateau's SaaS product offerings with the SuccessFactors' Business Execution (BizX) Suite. Plateau currently brings more than 350 customers to SuccessFactors.

News of this acquisition comes on the heels of other highly noteworthy acquisitions by SuccessFactors. In March, SuccessFactors acquired SaaS-based social learning platform, Jambok, to integrate social collaboration into its BizX Suite. Jambok's platform allows users to post video, audio, photos, as well as screen capture desktop in order to share knowledge within organization. This year SuccessFactors acquired three other companies for similarly stated reasons: CubeTree, Inform, and YouCalc.

In the past few months, the market for social learning and learning management has undergone a significant amount of M&A activity, suggesting that the competitive landscape for technology solutions to address these needs are increasing. For example, Taleo, a provider of on-demand talent management solutions, acquired Learn.com in September 2010. Learn.com provides SaaS learning management solutions, and its social learning and web conferencing features also enable companies to build collaborative learning and knowledge sharing solutions. Through the acquisition of Learn.com, Taleo has the opportunity to offer an integrated platform which integrates recruiting, performance management, compensation, and learning into a complete SaaS solution

There are likely to be more mergers and acquisitions in the coming months in this area. Read more about SuccessFactors' acquisition of Plateau.