Business Objects To Buy Acta In Analysis Software Deal

Taking aim at its toughest competitors, data-analysis software vendor Business Objects plans to acquire Acta Technology by September for $65 million in cash.

Companies use Business Objects' applications to analyze data from customer-relationship management, supply-chain management, and manufacturing systems. Privately held Acta, which booked about $25 million in sales last year, makes data extraction, transformation, and loading software that pulls data from operational apps such as SAP and PeopleSoft and moves it into data marts or data warehouses for analysis. "ETL is an important component of an enterprise analytic application offering," says Business Objects CEO Bernard Liautaud.

The acquisition puts Business Objects in direct competition with Informatica, a longtime supplier of data integration and ETL tools that's been expanding its line of analytical applications, and Cognos, which markets its analytical apps with its Decision Stream ETL software. Business Objects will also stop reselling ETL tools from Ascential Software.

Business Objects will continue to support Acta's roughly 230 customers--which include Chevron, Shell, and Unilever--even if they use Acta software with business-intelligence tools from other vendors.