Attachmate and WRQ to merge
On April 18th the investment group that purchased leading legacy integration tools provider WRQ in 2004, announced that it had reached agreement to buy the only other sizeable independent legacy integration vendor in the industry, Attachmate.
That the newly-acquired WRQ should be “taken shopping” by its new owners should have surprised no-one: no investment group worth its salt would have been happy to just try and help WRQ grow organically, and this market has already seen significant degrees of vendor consolidation (just in the past few months, Neon Systems has bought ClientSoft and InnerAccess; and Software AG has bought Sabratec). But it is a bit surprising that the investment group would go straight to the only other “large” independent legacy integration tools company in existence, and look to combine the two.
A great many company combinations of this nature do ultimately fail to deliver value, either to investors or to customers (anyone who needs evidence of this should speak to veteran industry analyst
Richard Holway). What’s absolutely crucial for success, is that the investors realise that principally, the value of the combined company will continue to be founded on its ability to serve its existing very large base of customers extremely well. “Attachmate-WRQ” will not be, for some time at least, a company able to launch itself out into virgin market territory. Moreover a great many companies are already customers of both Attachmate and WRQ.
Our advice to customers of Attachmate and/or WRQ: make real efforts to engage with the new company once the merger is complete, and make your expectations and interests clear. Be open with the company about your plans, and invite them to jointly explain how they will be able to help. If they can’t tell you a coherent story, it’s time to turn up the heat.
