Workday Acquires Cape Clear, Plans Integration On Demand Offering - SaaS Week

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February 07, 2008
Workday Acquires Cape Clear, Plans Integration On Demand Offering

Workday, Inc. yesterday announced that it had reached a definitive agreement to acquire Cape Clear. Workday is a provider of on-demand, SaaS-based ERP software and Cape Clear produces an Enterprise Service Bus platform.

As a part of the acquisition, Workday expects to accelerate support for custom integration on demand, and the Cape Clear solution will now be available only as part of an offering called Workday Integration On Demand -- but Workday will support existing Cape Clear customers. The acquisition will be complete in 30 days.

Workday present Annel Bhusri had this to say:

"Integrating business applications has always been much too difficult. At Workday, we made integration a core capability from the very start, and adding Cape Clear to our portfolio serves to deepen our focus and capability in this vital area. Increasingly, customers are looking to Workday to build and manage integration as a service. With Cape Clear’s ESB, we expect to rapidly increase our portfolio of both packaged and custom integration capabilities."

In a blog post at Cape Clear's website, CEO Annrai O'Toole wrote, "This could be the day that the middleware industry finally broke the mould on how to deliver integration technology — this could also be the day that SOA finally stood up and announced its intention to be a real driver of business value, and not just a driver of technology innovation."

ZDNet's Phil Wainewright posted an analysis of the acquisition, saying that the move shows that customers want middleware bundled with the application stack, meaning less integration work. He said the move could send other messages as well, pointing out that many Workday customers are former PeopleSoft customers who are tired of upgrades and constant need to switch to newer versions for necessary functionality and he predicted that Workday's momentum will increase over the next two years.