Aspen Technology Inc beat both Baan NV and Manugistics Group Inc to the acquisition of promising supply chain management and scheduling company Chesapeake Decision Sciences Inc yesterday. Aspen has a definitive agreement to acquire New Providence, New Jersey-based Chesapeake, which we identified as a target for acquisition back in February (CI No 3,343). Aspen says it wants Chesapeake’s supply chain expertise and technology to be combined with its own Plantelligence deep process software, which aims to help manufacturers respond to changes in supply and demand in real-time. Chesapeake’s MIMI Manager for Interactive Modeling Interfaces software will be integrated with Plantelligence. AspenTech will issue 2.95 million shares of common stock for the acquisition, which will be accounted for as a pooling of interests. Privately-held Chesapeake, founded in 1982, claims to be profitable, and posted $17m in revenues last year. The acquisition is the fourth Aspen has made this year. The others were Belgium software house Cimtech SA, Italian Contas Process Control S.r.L (CI No 3,360), and Houston, Texas-based IISYS Inc (CI No 3,367), all in the process control market.
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