The acquisition of Legadero is Borland’s first real foray into IT governance, a move that looked to be on the cards from the moment it announced its so-called Software Delivery Optimization (SDO) strategy last September.
Indeed with IT governance having gained a far higher profile and increasing user acceptance in recent years, it’s surprising that Borland waited so long to move into the space, leaving it instead to the likes of Mercury Interactive, Compuware, Computer Associates, HP, Planview and others.
But according to Borland’s Erik Frieberg, VP of products – who confirmed the acquisition will be announced soon – it was not a question of a lack of desire to move into IT governance, but a lack of suitable candidates to acquire.
A lot of the companies that we looked at in this space were over-reliant on maintenance revenues from sales they made a long time ago, he said. Legadero has a strong and growing customer base, significant sales, and fits Borland’s criteria for innovation.
Frieberg said that the company is not going to disclose the sum it paid for Legadero, but said the payment was all cash. All of Legadero’s 20 employees are to be retained, including senior management, according to Frieberg.
Legadero is based in Austin, Texas, and has 30 customers, all but two of which are based in North America. The company has almost no presence in Europe but has just started a push into Germany.
Legadero says it has a fully integrated suite of IT governance software, that enables CIOs, project managers, team leaders and other decision-makers to do three things: focus on the best investments based on business goals; perform better by executing investments efficiently, predictably and in accordance with policies; and measure the results achieved and calibrate forecasts.
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Specific modules include demand management, process automation, information gathering, portfolio management, project management, service management, resource management, time tracking, financial management, and asset management.
Frieberg said it is too early to talk about the specifics of any integration between Legadero’s products and Borland’s, but did say that it would make sense to do some integration with the best practice and methodology templates in the Process Asset Library that it came by through the acquisition of software development process software and consultancy firm TeraQuest Metrics in January this year.
By the third quarter of next year Borland hopes to be able to unveil some kind of integration between Legadero Tempo and Borland’s Core SDP product, which is IT governance-like already but currently only handles four roles: analyst, architect, developer and tester.
Integrating it with Legadero Tempo would logically see the addition of roles like project manager and applications development director. Until then Borland will continue to sell Legadero Tempo standalone.
Greg Rice, former president of Legadero and now senior director of product marketing at Borland, told Computer Business Review that Legadero was excited at the prospect of being able to leverage Borland’s sales force, especially outside of North America where Legadero has until now hardly strayed. He said that while Legadero is small, it has been focused on IT governance since 2000, and put out 15 new releases in the last four years alone.
Borland’s Frieberg conceded that even after this latest acquisition, Borland does not have all of the pieces of the puzzle to see its Software Delivery Optimization vision fulfilled: We’re definitely looking to make some more acquisitions, he said.
