Inprise buys Apogee, boosts services
Software and services provider Inprise says it has acquired enterprise systems integration and consulting firm Apogee Information Systems.
As a result of the transaction, Apogee will become part of Inprise's Professional Services organization. Financial terms of the cash transaction were not disclosed.
Inprise, which this year changed its name from Borland, said it made the acquisition to strengthen its fledgling enterprise-level consulting and services offerings.
"We have a growing enterprise professional services program," said Marc Rudov, vice president of enterprise marketing at Inprise. "We have found an organization that can enhance our ability to provide quality enterprise consulting and services. And it is one we already have a relationship with. We know the people and the company."
Apogee has long been a partner of Inprise, Rudov said. Apogee Information Systems is a specialty consulting practice focused on the implementation of distributed, business-logic-driven systems. Using multitier information systems the 22-person company assists global clients with the integration of data and business processes. The 22 Apogee employees will join the roughly 100-person staff of the professional services arm of Inprise.
As Inprise has moved farther away from being just a product maker and closer to a full "solution" provider, the company needs to boost its services offerings, said Rudov. "You can't be a good enterprise player without a professional services arm."
The company in April announced it changed its name from Borland to Inprise, along with plans for a new line of application server software targeted at large corporations. The new application server is expected to be unveiled next week.
Inprise also said it was jumping into the lucrative services market with a new services arm and alliances with systems integrators and consultants.
All three moves are intended to make Inprise a player in the multibillion-dollar corporate information technology market. The company had cut its teeth in the computing world as a provider of tools to individual developers, which created a fierce loyalty among coders. Inprise continues to sell development tools under the Borland brand name.