There’s speculation that Bridgewater, New Jersey-based clustering and high availability software company Entersoft Systems Corp is on the verge of being acquired, possibly by BEA Systems Inc, which has vacuumed up a slew of independent software vendors. BEA already supplies the Top End OLTP software it acquired from NCR Corp to Entersoft (CI No 3,443). Entersoft also supplies NCR’s LifeKeeper clustering software to the Windows NT world, including OEM partner Amdahl Corp. Only last week Entersoft said it was talking to BEA about broadening their relationship – it wants to resell BEA’s M3 middleware suite. Sources at both companies hinted that an acquisition could be at hand, although BEA indicated any deal is hardly likely to turn the industry on its head. Entersoft has also hinted it would like to take full control of LifeKeeper from NCR, just like the deal BEA did with Novell Inc for its other TP monitor, Tuxedo. Entersoft would be a logical fit with BEA’s other middleware products. Meantime, Amdahl recently indicated that it doubted Entersoft had the resources to carry LifeKeeper development forward on its own and would presumably therefore see Entersoft’s acquisition by a bigger company as beneficial. Ward Geise came from Information Management Co, one of the companies originally bought by BEA.
