Deal Watch: SAP Buying Ariba for $4.3 Billion

SAP America has entered into an agreement to acquire Ariba, a leading cloud-based business commerce network, for $45.00 per share, or about $4.3 billion. Ariba’s buyer-seller collaboration network will be combined with SAP's existing solutions and create new models for business-to-business collaboration in the cloud. Last week a company roadmap was presented for its cloud applications business (Software-as-a-Service), focusing on managing customers, suppliers, employees, and financials, in addition to its cloud suite offerings SAP Business ByDesign and SAP Business One.

Industry experts estimate the cloud-based enterprise network and procurement segment at a current size of $5 billion in revenue. Ariba says its network connects and automates more than $319 billion in commerce transactions, collaborations, and intelligence among more than 730,000 companies. Upon completion of the transaction, all cloud-related supplier assets of SAP will be consolidated under Ariba.

“The cloud has profoundly changed the way people interact. The impact will be even greater as enterprises connect and collaborate in new ways with their global networks of customers and partners,” said SAP Co-CEOs Bill McDermott and Jim Hagemann Snabe. “Cloud-based collaboration is redefining business network innovation, and we are catching this wave in the early stage of its evolution. The addition of Ariba will create the business network of the future, deliver immediate value to our customers and provide another solid engine for driving SAP’s growth in the cloud.”

Here's an update on several other tech sector deals announced this week:

VMware acquires Wanova

VMware announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Wanova, a provider of intelligent desktop solutions that centralize and simplify the management of physical desktop images while enabling users to take advantage of the native performance of a PC. Wanova Mirage, combined with VMware View software will allow for deploying a centralized, single image management for both physical and virtual desktops, support departmental and user installed applications, allow for high availability and rapid disaster recovery, and provide universal access to facilitate seamless transitions between all types of endpoints - physical, virtual, tethered desktops, or roaming laptops. VMWare CTO Scott Davis welcomes Wanova into the VMware End-User Computing product portfolio in a recent blog post.

“The acquisition of Wanova will bring together industry leading solutions for centralized image management of both physical and virtual desktops,” said Jeff Jennings, vice president, Enterprise Desktop, VMware. “This combination has the potential to redefine the desktop virtualization landscape.  By blurring the boundaries of virtual vs. physical desktops, the benefits of central image management and persistent user installed applications can be extended to all systems within a business – physical, virtual, tethered desktops, or roaming Mac and PC laptops.”

Oracle acquires Vitrue

Oracle (ORCL) announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire Vitrue, a cloud-based social marketing and engagement platform that enables marketers to centrally create, publish, moderate, manage, measure and report on their social marketing campaigns and activities on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Google+. Oracle’s sales, service, commerce, social data management and analytics capabilities, combined with Vitrue, are expected to create an advanced and comprehensive social relationship platform.

“The proliferation of social media and an increased demand by consumers to engage with brands across multiple social channels is driving chief marketing officers to look for an integrated social marketing platform,” said Thomas Kurian, executive vice president, Oracle Development. “Vitrue’s leading social marketing and engagement platform coupled with Oracle’s leading sales, service, and commerce products offers a complete social experience solution to our customers.”