Agilisys Acquires daly.commerce

Agilisys, a developer of enterprise application for the automotive and complex and process manufacturing industries, earlier this month acquired daly.commerce, a developer of OS/400-based ERP software for the distribution industry.

Agilisys is not to be confused with Agilysys, the giant IT distributor based in Cleveland, Ohio.

Agilisys, the Atlanta-based software company, has been in acquisition mode for the last 15 months, starting with its acquisition of bankrupt BRAIN (an automotive ERP supplier), in December 2002, and continuing last June with Future 3, another automotive software developer, and this February with infor business solutions AG, a midmarket German ERP provider. Daly.commerce, which was founded more than 25 years ago, as Daly & Wolcott, developed the first distribution package on the OS/400 platform when it was launched in 1988, and today the East Greenwich, Rhode Island, company has around 1,200 customers on its OS/400-based Application Plus and Unix and Windows-based commerce@work series of products worldwide.

Terrance Daly, chief executive of daly.commerce, said the acquisition will provide the financial backing necessary to invest in the products, to grow the business, and to compete effectively on a long-term basis. “Our customers, employees, partners, and company as a whole will benefit from the growth that will result from becoming part of a world-class organization like Agilisys,” Daly stated. The purchase price was not disclosed.

While most IT industry vendors, experts, and analysts are predicting that IT spending is going to pick up in 2004, it’s still a bit rocky out there. Smaller software firms that support all kinds of platforms–not just OS/400–are being snapped up by the bigger fish in the software market because it is increasingly difficult to muscle into accounts to sell products. The software industry is undergoing a wave of consolidation at all levels, being driven by financial imperatives, not technical ones. Although in some cases vendors are filling in gaps in their product lines to help them sell better. In a mature market, being bigger usually means selling better. Whether or not it means better products, more competition, and better pricing comes down to individual strategies and executions and how well competition can be sustained.