Software AG feels the need for speed in latest acquistion

by Brenon Daly

Moving to bolster its middleware messaging technology, Software AG said Monday that it would pick up London-based my-Channels. The acquisition of 13-year-old my-Channels, which is probably best known for its Nirvana product used in foreign currency trading, will provide technology to the German BPM giant that will allow customers to stream data to a variety of sources. Software AG plans to release the first product integrated with the newly acquired Nirvana technology before the end of the year, although the technology will be interoperable with its webMethods suite shortly.

The purchase by Software AG, which is its first deal in almost a year, has a few echoes with an acquisition Informatica did almost two years ago. Like my-Channels, 29West focused on high-volume, low-latency messaging for financial services firms. Informatica indicated that it paid about $40m for 29West, which we suspect is more than Software AG paid for my-Channels. However, according to our understanding, 29West had almost three times the revenue of the UK-based startup