This year has been a watermark year for takeovers and mergers in the area of asset management consultancy and services companies.

Growing regulatory burdens, rampant resource sector demand, financial regulators stiffening their resolve in European utility markets, surges in defense spending, and the recent infrastructure spotlight in the US are driving a greater need for companies to understand, predict and manage the risks of asset failure.

This has been most apparent in the sectors of software and technology companies. Since late last year we have seen a range of technology take overs.

The most high profile to date has been the take over of MRO Software (MRO) by IBM (IBM), sent a warning that a new and large scale player was entering the field of asset maintenance technologies. The flagship product IBM Maximo holds a dominant position within manufacturing companies as well as within the North American Utilities industries.

Private equity firm Francisco Partners deepened their exposure into asset-intensive technologies with the purchase of Mincom, the Australian Asset management Software house, specializing in Mining, Defense and Utilities industries. This adds to their already impressive portfolio of technological assets within this sector including the ubiquitous Primavera technology and a range of supporting technological companies in IT and hardware.

The most recent addition to this has been the purchase of Information Science Consultants in the UK, ISC, by IFS Defence adding a deep and recognised level of RCM functionality to a company that is already a dominant player in asset management with many of the world’s larger organizations and institutions.

This particular acquisition holds possibly more interest than the rest within this field, because it signals a drive to widen the functionality base of standard EAM approaches to asset management.

Last of the big deals is a range of deals that have been undertaken by Infor Global Solutions a very low profile operator in the Enterprise Asset Management field; yet according to AMR Research it has more enterprise customers than SAP and Oracle combined and is the third largest Enterprise technology vendor in the world. (Around 70,000 customers)
Still a private company, with heavy support from Golden Gate Capital, have made an astounding number of acquisitions, giving it around $2.1 billion in annual revenues and making it the 10th largest software company in the world.

A phenomenal success story for a company that is barely 5 years old!

The list of acquisitions is impressive and shows a level of momentum and vision beyond other notable players in the field.

• May 2007 – Purchased Hansen Information Technologies providing a launch pad into government and utility sectors with their popular Windows based ERP system. (Rail, public works, government, utilities)

• April 2007 – Purchased Workbrain a workforce management solution for around $200 million.

• January 2006 – Purchases SSA Global. Giving them access to their large customer base of supply chain companies as well as the Baan product that they had previously acquired.

January 2006 – Purchases Datastream for $10.26 per share in cash.

While others are focusing on organic growth and playing the time honoured game of competing on price and functionality, Infor has ridden over the top of all of them securing themselves as the leaders within the field; even though nobody knows who they are. So what could be next for this amazing feature of the AM landscape?

An IPO seems inevitable although there is no news on that front. In the meantime they have ensured that their voice will be heard above most others around the globe; challenging recognised leaders SAP and Maximo (for this sector) to dominate the playing field altogether.