– 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