Home / Deals / Advised Cape Clear Software, an ESB platform vendor, on its acquisition by Workday, the pioneer in on-demand ERP solutions

Advised Cape Clear Software, an ESB platform vendor, on its acquisition by Workday, the pioneer in on-demand ERP solutions
Feb 2008
acquired by
  • Sector: Infrastructure Software & Cybersecurity
  • Deal Type: Strategic Deals; Venture Capital Exits
  • Engagement type: Sellside
  • Size: <$200m
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We are pleased to announce that Arma Partners has acted as exclusive financial advisor to Cape Clear Software Inc., the industry’s leading Enterprise Services Bus (ESB) provider, on its acquisition by Workday, Inc. announced on February 6, 2008. This acquisition reflects Workday’s intent to take greater responsibility for customer integrations and to accelerate its efforts to support customers with packaged and custom Integration On Demand.

Workday, founded in 2005 by former PeopleSoft founder and CEO Dave Duffield, delivers the first on-demand alternative to Enterprise Resource Planning packages with a new generation of solutions designed for today’s dynamic, global businesses. Workday sees integration as a core requirement for customers and has used the Cape Clear ESB as a component of every Workday deployment to provide universal, open standards-based connectivity for virtually all types of business applications, information and processes.

Recognized by Gartner, Forrester, and IT-Week Magazine as the leading ESB, Cape Clear is in deployment by leading financial services, communications, software on demand, media, government, energy, transportation, and defense organizations. Founded in 1999, Cape Clear is backed by Accel Partners, Greylock Partners, ACT Private Equity and InterWest Partners.

Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed and Workday expects to complete the purchase in 30 days.

– Cape Clear is widely recognised as the market-leading independent Enterprise Service Bus (“ESB”) vendor

– Since its inception in 1999 by former IONA Founders and executives, Cape Clear has developed unique capabilities around multi-tenanted, multi-channel “on-demand integration” deployments

– Cape Clear was backed by Accel, Greylock, ACT Ventures and Interwest

– Workday was founded in 2005 by Dave Duffield, former PeopleSoft founder and CEO, to deliver the next generation of on-demand enterprise business solutions

– Positioned as the on-demand alternative to ERP systems, Workday’s products span Human Capital Management, Financial Management, Resource Management and Revenue Management

– Workday employs c. 200 staff

– Nearly 100% of Workday deployments were enabled through Cape Clear’s ESB, making Cape Clear’s on-demand integration capabilities core to Workday’s go-forward strategy

– The acquisition enabled Workday to solve the single biggest hurdle to their growth ambitions by successfully addressing their customers’ integration challenges between Workday’s on-demand solutions and the existing on-premise IT ecosystem. This has acted as a key differentiator for Workday vis-à-vis other on-demand application software providers

– The Cape Clear product also helps Workday effectively and profitably monetize the integration spend and capture a larger share of customer spending during new on-demand deployments

– Cape Clear had received inbound expressions of interest due to its unique position as the leading independent provider of ESB technology and also an early pioneer of on-demand integration technology

– Arma Partners was brought in to manage a focused process involving a handful of buyers with minimal disruption to the core business

– The key challenge in the process was positioning Cape Clear’s value proposition uniquely for each of the potential buyers and maximizing valuation based on the individual strategic fit

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