Tibco Software[1], an enterprise integration and data analytics player, announced yesterday an agreement to acquire Information Builders[2] (IBI), a pioneer in business intelligence (BI) and enterprise reporting. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, though Reuters has reported[3] that the deal may be valued as high as $1B.
Also read: Tibco buys Information Builders to combine data, analytics product portfolios[4]
Executive summary
ZDNet spoke to the CEOs of both companies, who explained the synergies they see arising from the acquisition. In describing the two companies' courtship, IBI CEO Frank J. Vella thought compatibility was very high: "...you're not often in a luxurious position to pick your buyer; it has to be mutual," Vella said. He added "...there was a lot of interest. We were pleasantly surprised and flattered at the interest." Vella also remarked that people, product and customers were IBI's biggest priorities in assessing the right buyer, and that Tibco excelled in all three areas. He further opined that the product portfolios seemed mostly complementary.
Tibco CEO Dan Streetman agreed with Vella's assessment on compatibility, saying "To Frank's point, the place where we have potentially the most overlap in a Venn diagram might be in visualizations and analytics, but we have this thesis that analytics are way more than BI and way more than visualizations. It's hyperconverged analytics, and that really extends all the way to the integration and the data preparation...so we see a lot of great synergies in culture, but also in products." Streetman also feels that, when taking into account situations where the two companies have a presence in different parts of the same company, that the real overlap in customer base would be 20% at most. Streetman also commented that he expects the merger to