Will Recent Acquisition Catalyze Catalyst’s Strategy?
Part One: Event Summary
P.J. Jakovljevic - October 25, 2004

Event Summary

The long predicted consolidation within the warehouse management systems/supply chain execution (WMS)/ (SCE) market seems finally to be happening, albeit behind schedule. Yet, the pathway to consolidation has proceeded along a somewhat unexpected route, and the key players have not always been the usual suspects. Namely, instead of a direct intra-market consolidation, some public SCE/WMS vendors--or smaller, even profitable but undercapitalized and undervalued WMS/SCE vendors--have been acquired by wealthy, more visible parents that may or may not have their own complementary products. An example of the a struggling public WMS/SCE vendor is seen in the recent acquisition of former EXE Technologies by SSA Global. Examples of the latter is the agreement by 3M to acquire HighJump Software, the acquisition of OMI International by Retalix ; Investcorp's recent acquisition of Viewlocity (which originates from the three-way merger between former publicly-held supply chain planning [SCP] provider SynQuest with two privately held supply chain event management [SCEM] providers, Viewlocity and Tilion in 2002. Also included in this category is Provia Software’s recent alignment with its parent Viastore, as well as the acquisitions of TRW by QAD and TDC Solutions by Epicor...