March 04, 2008
München's AndUnite Raises Angel Funding To Relaunch
Germany's AndUnite gets in touch to say that they are relaunching their site on March 5 and adds that they are looking to raise a round of venture capital. AndUnite has raised a round of angel funding.
The idea with Andunite is to store the search terms that registered AndUnite users have run on Google and other search engines. Users can then see what others users are searching for as well as aggregate data like which are the most frequently entered search terms.
Of course the perceived challenge here is that users might feel that their privacy has been invaded. On the flipside, numerous other startups like Flickr have prospered on the back of data that many would feel is too personal.
Online Videos by Veoh.com
German Speakers might be interested in this video walk-through
View - site
Posted at 02:13 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
August 13, 2007
Enigmatec Raises $12.5M For Data Center Management SW
Enigmatec, a UK startup that sells data center management software ( buzzword is Run Book Automation or RBA), now has a heavy-hitting tech founder as an investor in addition to VCs, according to its announcement today where it said it raised $12.5 million (£6.25 million) in series ‘C’ financing.
Expansion plans will be funded by the new money. Enigmatec has raised $30M since Amadeus seeded the venture back in 2002.
The latest funding round included current investors Amadeus Capital Partners and Pentech Ventures out of Scotland, with additional participation from Herald Ventures and Kevin Lomax, formerly the executive Chairman of Misys. Both new investors will get a board seat. Lomax is executive chairman.
The early investors our regular readers will be familiar with. Misys you will recall is one of Europe's larger software companies and is more than 25 years old. It was founded by Kevin Lomax and is publicly traded out of the UK. It employs 6,000 people with turnover in excess of £1B, according to Digital Look. Its market cap is £1.2B.
Lomax recently stepped down from a dual role of CEO and board chairman.
Herald Venture is a UK only VC fund that typically puts in new capital rather buying out existing shareholders. It will generally take a minority stake and seeks a board seat too.
View Enigmatec
Posted at 05:40 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
March 07, 2007
Northzone Backing Swedish Xcerion For Web Coders
Northzone Ventures has invested $10M into Xcerion, according to several trade press reports. The deal seems to have been announced in early February in Sweden but came to our attention as a result of an article in InformationWeek. One of the first to report it as far as we could determine was e24.se.
This is a huge investment for early stage investor, Northzone -- it typically invests less than €4M in a first round -- especially because the company is set to market what sounds to us like software for developer's, not exactly a hot market for a startup. It must be the business model that makes it a venture capital target.
But we're just guessing and will check with Northzone to find out more but also because your a:c euro reporter is having trouble getting a line on what Xcerion has developed.
The reports we eyeballed say that Xcerion is planning on launching free code to enable developers to write web apps with, but then it also claims to make any computer your computer which makes it sound like one of those myPC-on-a-USB-stick kind of things, although it is offering the ability to carry your apps with you, not just your files, so it's like a virtual machine with deeper than usual control? We just don't know.
In the meantime, a couple of trade pubs have been mightily impressed by Xcerion, one of the pubs paid attention because some former Microsoft execs are early investors, and while Slashdot editors covered it too, their readers expressed skepticism because the news came out before the company had actually released any code, making it vaporware, in readers' eyes.
Read - Xcerion vill sprida gratis programvara (e24.se)
Read - Is it absurd to think ... (slashdot)
Read - Could a startup beat Microsoft and Google to market with a ‘cloud OS’? (ZDNET Foley blog)
Read - Xcerion's Internet Cloud Forms Over Google and Microsoft (informationweek)
Posted at 07:37 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
September 21, 2006
Spreading Of Netnoldege's PAIN Financed
French startup Netnoledge has developed software to make Internet file transfers and communications more secure based on the public key encryption (PKI) protocols. It is the kind of software that enables privacy, authentification, integrity and non-repudiation (PAIN) of data and email exchanges via the Internet.
Screenshot From Netnoledge Showing Non-repudiable Transfers In Progress
The two year old company, which is a Delaware-registered company with offices in Sceaux, France, announced that it raised a first round of financing from DGME FINANCES of an undisclosed amount this week. The new money is for R&D and to expand its efforts in the UK and German markets.
A couple of Swiss banks and French research institutes are the types of organizations that are its early customers, according CEO and founder Michel Doric. He told us that Netnoledge launched the product in February and he's forecasting for end of 2007 sales of €5M.
We checked with one of our VC contacts who has had some healthy liquidity events, as they say, with security software companies over the last ten years and he confirms that PKI and security software in general is still a "vibrant" market.
And that it is indeed possible for a PKI company to reach the kinds of revenues Doric is forecasting if, for example, it manages to get a few large institutions as customers.
PKI has been around for a while and there are products on the market from names like Entrust and DigiCert. What makes this one different is its claim that it is the only one to offer a solution where no third party certificate authority is required.
We don't know the other products well enough in this market to validate that, but what we do see is that Netnoledge is smart in the way that it is securing early stage cashflow.
It is making it easy for companies large and small to make a decision to buy. Customers are offered three ways to purchase: traditional software licensing, full rental model, or subscrition to a hosted PKI platform from Netnoledge.
The latter two sales models mean that it can sign customers up without having to wait until several layers of management in the customer organization agree to write a big cheque for a full-blown client-server software license. That strategy can give startups that all-important inflow of cash to keep it going until it makes some long term licensing deals.
The company founder told the alarm:clock euro that Netnoledge had been self-financed until DGME stepped in. It is currently building up channel partners and OEM deals several countries, including the US.
Read - NETNOLEDGE réalise une première levée de fonds auprès de DGME FINANCES (prminds)
Posted at 06:39 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
September 14, 2006
Softbank Invests In Asknet's Japanese Market Expansion
Asknet, an online software distribution platform company, has sold a 10 percent equity stake to Softbank BB Corp of Tokyo. The investment was part of an increase in Asknet's capital. Further terms were undisclosed.
The two had announced a joint venture to cover the Japanese market a month ago.
Asknet is a spinoff from the University of Karlsruhe that was founded in 1995. It claims to be the number two independent supplier of integrated shop solutions for software producers. It also operates its own software download site.
Sales in 2005 were €35M. It is backed by German VCs, including AdAstra, HVB, and Süd Private Equity. Institutional investors plus Softbank own 65 percent of the company. Before this round it raised €12M in total, we believe.
Posted at 06:36 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
July 04, 2006
Open Source: It's Not A Space - It's Not A Category
A handful of European VCs are quoted on their views on open source in Computer Business Review today. All agree that open source is the new model for software firms - both in terms of the way software is developed (by a community of volunteers) and the way software will be distributed.
None of the VCs quoted would be the ones that you would go to with your on-demand software business, we take it.
Bernard Dalle, a GP at Index Ventures:
"We anticipate it's going to be very hard going forward to invest in closed source, because we don't think it's a good development model."
Robin Vasan, managing director at the Mayfield Fund:
"We don't see this as a space, we're not calling this a category. We think this is an integral part of the industry today."
Frank Bohnke, general partner at Wellington.
"Ultimately these open source companies have to prove that they can build brands, they can sell, and they can build profitable companies. I don't think there are many companies yet who can do that and prove the theoretical benefits of open source."
And we would add that there would need to be a few more good sized exits (in this cycle) in the open source market before VCs can say that it has proven to be the best business model for venture-backed software companies.
Read - VCs expect open source to be default option (computer business review online)
Posted at 01:38 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
June 28, 2006
Alfresco's Bathroom Positioning And Low-Budget Marketing Success
We've written about it before, how European founders are boasting about their lean R&D and low cash-burn marketing efforts, here is another example.
The management at Alfresco, an open source document management software company whose founders hail from big name software firms that spent lavishly on such efforts, seem to be having fun with taking a very different marketing approach this time around.
Alfresco's Booth At A Recent Trade Show Has A Retro Look - Reminds Us Of School Science Fairs And Yet It Pulled Traffic.
The secret apparently was being located near the public restrooms.
At the Expo, our booth has to have got to win an award -- for least pretentious and best home construction project. Compared to the multi-million dollar monstrosities of EMC, IBM, Filenet, Kodak, Xerox, etc., I think we only spent a couple of hundred dollars on it. At least you know that our money is going on product rather than fancy marketing. But because we were near the bathrooms, we got pretty good traffic. We got some fantastic leads and keen interest from our attendance.
If this is really a trend, how long until we're feeling nostalgia for the booth babes, the slick suits, the free beer, the blaring audio/video displays, and arm-breaking bags of freebies?
Read - Last Week at AIIM and Java One (John Newton's blog)
Posted at 07:28 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
June 13, 2006
Our Hypemeter Registers Euro Open Source Startups
We ran our hypemeter (currently a crude, labor-intensive device that we'd like to see automated) over the open source sector in the region and have found a few younger startups that are beginning to register some spiky readings.
Alfresco, founded in 2005, based in UK, and backed by Accel Partners (european fund) is an open source content management software distribution, founded by John Newton, who co-founded Documentum (acquired by EMC in 2003). The management team all have blogs and have achieved quite a bit of industry buzz in a short period of time. We are not sure if that momentum is reflected in its sales, but we're sure this startup will be letting the world know, the moment it does.
Alfresco has done a lot push out of the way the initial scepticism about the ability of the management team to switch from proprietary and traditional software business model to the open source one.
Media Buzz = 40 (number of recent mentions in the press)
Blog Buzz= 1,285 (blog posts containing "Alfresco and open source" )
Sourceforge rank= 157
Overall hypemeter rating (scale of 1 to 10)=9
CEO Quote:
IT decisions are based on maximum information (perhaps too much information at times?), not marketing messages and sales guys with good hair.
Logicalware, based in Scotland, develops an increasingly popular open source application called MailManager, mainly used for streamlining customer support desks, a pretty competitive niche to be in. Founded in 2002, the startup is backed by Sigma Technology, an AIM listed VC fund.
Media Buzz= 1 (rnumber of times mentioned in the press recently)
Blog Buzz= 77 (blog posts that mention the firm)
Sourceforge Rank= 12
Overall Hypemeter Rating = 6
CEO Quote:
Our headquarters are in Eskmills near Edinburgh, Scotland. Eskmills was built 138 years ago and at the time was home to the largest fishing net company in the world. We aim to have the same success with email response management systems.
Having said all that, it should be noted that Europe hasn't had a good sized exit in this market since Novell acquired SUSE Linux back in 2004. The valuation for Trolltech's upccoming IPO will provide some insight into the potential returns, and so would MySQL if and when it has a liquidity event.
Posted at 08:07 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
June 06, 2006
Tribold Geek Completes All-female Greenland Ice Trip
Who says geeks are pale skinned, anorak-wearing folk with poor muscle tone? A software engineer at VC-backed Tribold just crossed Greenland's ice sheet, as part of an all-female and all British team that battled the elements on skis for 650 kilometres in 16 and a half days to reach Ammasillik on the country’s east coast.
OK, the anorak part might be right but it's worn here of necessity.
Software Engineer Jenny Pugh (far right) And The Arctic Fox Team.
Jenny Pugh of Tribold, a two year old software company in the UK whose products are used by telcos to manage the product lifecycle (so-call PPM tools), trained for eight months and took two months off from her job at the startup to complete the journey for a local charity organization.
Tribold is on our radar. It was founded in 2003 by Simon Muderack, who serves as CEO, and Catherine Michel, CTO, both former Accenture execs. It recently raised capital from Eden Ventures, one of the few early stage European tech VC to have raised a new fund this cycle. It's doing more than putting out brand building press releases - from what we are hearing it's making headway selling into enterprise and operations units of some good-sized telcos.
Read- Tribold software expert Jenny Pugh succeeds in historic all-female crossing of Greenland's ice sheet
Posted at 08:27 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
May 31, 2006
Qlayer Virtualizes Servers To Storage
Qlayer has raised a first round of venture capital from Big Bang Ventures. Its co-founder and CEO, Kristof De Spiegeleer, also founded web hosting company Dedigate (which was acquired by Terremark last August) and DataCenterTechnologies (acquired by Veritas/Symantec early last year). Interestingly, the founder tapped the same VC this time around.
The Belgian firm, founded in 2005, says it brings together three virtualization technologies into a "single easy to use platform": server virtualization, network virtualization and storage virtualization.
Read- Big Bang Ventures II invests in Qlayer(press release)
Posted at 05:48 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
May 26, 2006
Esmertec's Bumpy Ride
A week ago mobilephone software developer, Esmertec, saw its share price take a dive on the SWX Swiss Exchange after issuing negative sales guidance. It’s share price and valuation are now down by 75 percent from its successful IPO pricing.
Esmertec's Stock Price Movement Since Its IPO
It is not unusual in today’s market to see a growth stock fall 30 percent on news of missing targets. (It is one reason that IPOs in the US have been shunned in favour of an M&A type exit).
But Esmertec's fell by much more than 30 percent last week. So what happened?
Our research shows that it was a combination of things: the negative sales news, changes in the top management, and an illiquid stock.
The stock was positioned as a high growth venture, so when the Javaphone software developer announced that sales would be 50 percent lower than expected in the first half, down to about $10 million compared with $20.1 million a year earlier, the stock market reacted accordingly.
It didn’t matter that the downward sales numbers was due in part to a move to focus on shorter term sales contracts meant to make revenues more sustainable. That notion was overshadowed by the news that competitive pressure was affecting the price for its flagship software product.
The negative sales guidance was mentioned in the same press release that said that the CEO was stepping down to be replaced by the COO.
That particular announcement came very close in time to news issued just the week before by Esmertec, that gave the dates for the scheduled departures of the firm's two founders and another C-level manager.
The firm's board was doing something that is not uncommon, switching out top management because they are not the right people for the job anymore.
"There is no exodus of management from Esmertec but an adaptation of the current team to the market changes; our technical team was java only and we had to adapt," said Jean Schmitt [Esmertec board member and Sofinnova partner].
But the press here and shareholders didn't see it the same way. They saw it as the top level management jumping ship.
And because Esmertec is a fairly illiquid stock, something confirmed by a Zurich based investment bank, a selloff resulted that battered the share price.
Venture backers are still holding Esmertec stock and retain the same amount of shares stated in the startup's 2005 annual report, according to Esmertec's IR executive, Deborah Choate.
Schmitt said:
Sofinnova and Earlybird to my knowledge as well did not sell shares; we are supporting the company and are believers. The company has lots of great assets, lots of customers, lots of new opportunities.
Hopes are pinned on the company executing on its new strategy under the leadership of the new CEO Jean Claude Martinez.
"Jean Claude is the leader of the company; he is not a show man but an execution animal," commented Schmitt.
Esmertec is a vendor of embedded systems for javaphones. It was founded in 1999 and completed about half a dozen technologies acquisitions over the years, a veritable low-budget rollup machine with a strong focus on consolidating JVM developers, which enabled it to grow to $40M in annual sales and achieve profitability before going public.
In late January the firm announced it was having difficulty collecting royalties and that it was adapting its accounting methodology to deal with that. It also said that expenses were on the increase due to investment in Chinese and Japanese R&D.
In Februrary it said it would open a new market segment beyond the handset, the mobile network operator market. It kick-started this move with an acquisition in France, Cellicium.
The next scheduled newsflow from Esmertec is expected at the end of August. By then it will be clearer how the firm is doing reducing its dependancy on the Java embeded product and if it has found a way to generate more reliable revenues.
Posted at 08:50 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
May 24, 2006
Paris-based Galileo Back Open Source Startup
French blog, Altaide, alerted us to a €2.1M venture capital injection into open source software startup Talend by Galileo Partners.
We would describe Talend's flagship product as open source data integration software, a form of middleware. It is ideally used in datawarehousing, grid computing, and datamart environments.
Looking at a recent presentation by Talend, it clearly aims to compet with commercial software venors Informatica, Sunopsis and DataMirror. MySQL is a reseller of Talend's software.
Read Press release from Talend (Chausson Finance blog)
Read Talend une star ( Altaide blog)
Posted at 10:55 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
May 10, 2006
French Financial Software Firm Raises €5M
Business Intelligence software company, BI-SAM Technologies, has raised €5M from Galileo Partners and Alven Capital in an all French deal. The financing is to be used to fund international expansion. BI-SAM's software is used by banks and asset managers for portfolio management.
Read - BI-Sam Technologies Lève (Journal Du Net)
Posted at 01:29 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
May 03, 2006
Testing The Real-Timing
German startup, Symtavision, whose software tests the performance of real-time systems found in mobilephones and automobiles, has raised a seed round €0.5M from the HighTech Gruenderfonds, a fund that was set up by the State to back the very early stage for university spinoffs.
Symtavision, which was founded in May 2005, is a spin-off from the Technical University of Braunschweig, has had quite a bit of coverage in the German press because its software is being touted as being able to prevent expensive auto industry recalls due to electronics defects, and as enabling getting electronic products timely market entries.
If Symptavision's founders get it right, they just might find BMW, Volkswagen, and Daimler Chrysler knocking on the door. Apparently, the firm has already signed up Samsung's mobilephone unit.
Read - Braunschweiger Symtavision GmbH erhält Beteiligungsfinanzierung vom High-Tech Gründerfonds
Posted at 12:48 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
May 02, 2006
Spain's Polymita Hoping For Enterprise Web 2.0
VCs haven't been investing in web development software for some time, so it is interesting to see that three year old Polymita Technologies in Spain has raised €2.5M from Spanish venture firms Molins Capital Inversión and Adara Venture Partners.
Polymita sells software and platforms for business process management, portal development, and content management to the enterprise market, promising customers a high level of return on investment. It is active mainly in the Spanish market. The new capital will be used to grow internationally and for some product development, it said.
Maybe the investors are counting on the enterprise market to start renewing web sites in a big way. Since the firm sells fairly comprehensive solutions, we take it, including portal software that supports using AJAX technologies for web development, it might be positioned well if and when that growth starts to happen. It sells directly and through reseller partners.
Read - Polymita Funding Announcement
Read - Polymita AJAX Support Announcement (in Spanish)
Posted at 11:57 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
April 27, 2006
Digital Pen Firm Taps US VCs
Pegasus Technologies, which develops digital handwriting input solutions, has closed a $4.8 million financing round from US venture capital firm Cedar Fund Cedar Fund and two existing Japanese investors, Nippon Venture Capital and the NFP fund, reports Globes.
It's not a down round, similar valuation to last round, according to the online journal, but the early Israel-based investors did not participate in the latest round. Founded in 1992, Pegasus has raised a total of $14 million.
There are only a handful of companies making a go of the digital pen business. In addition to Pegasus, Sweden's Anoto is doing it, as is Taiwann's UC Logics with its LaPazz products. Each has its own quirks, some requiring special paper, while others require special hardware or communications support.
Read - Graphics co Pegasus raises $4.8m
Posted at 04:28 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
The Shape Of France's Software Industry
There's some newsflow this moring in the French press about the state of the country's software industry, the result of the publishing of the latest Truffle 100, which is a detailed survey of the sector. (It came out at Capital IT investor's conference underway in Paris. Red Herring was there yesterday and has a report. Link below).
The good news is that the Truffle 100 total sales grew by +28%, which is a higher growth rate than industry heavyweights Microsoft and SAP. And R&D spending by software firms in France is growing at a rapid rate, exceeding €970M in 2005, up by 24% from last year's spending.
The bad news is that you could put the entire French software industry into Symantec, which alone generates about €3B in annual sales, as L'Expansion reports, adding that SAP does more than twice that amount, Oracle three times, and Microsoft 10 times. The Truffle 100 software firms generate €3.6B per year. A good 71% of the firms on the list generate less than €15M.
Our image here and associated is last year's as the latest one is not online yet. We will try to get a copy and to get some analysis from our contacts in France. Here are a couple of numbers from this year's list.
- 1. Dassault €934M.
- 2. Business Objects € 865M
- 3. Cegid € 192M
Read - France’s $2.5B Tech Foray (Red Herring)
Posted at 06:29 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
April 20, 2006
Internal Round For Quick-Growing Ascade In Sweden
Sweden's second fastest growing software company has tapped existing investors,SEB Foretagsinvest and CapMan, for €2.1M.
In Sweden, Ascade, whose software is used by telcos to manage wholesale voice minutes transactions, is number two, and Patrix, a developer of intellectual property software tools, is number one, according to Deloitte, which ranks firms by rate of sales growth.
Ascade has an impressive profile. It was founded in 1997 as an IT consultancy and has managed to morph itself into a software vendor, something many here in Europe try but few execute with great success. It made the transition in 2000. Three years later, it raised its first round of financing from the same two investors. It raised a total of about €4M prior to this round.
Even more challenging was its decision to target teclos with its software - telcos do not normally like to buy from a startup. However, it has found demand in that tough market and is starting to win customers beyond Europe. The new capital will be used to boost operations and for some product development.
Read - Ascade AB Secures (press release)
Posted at 07:39 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
April 19, 2006
VC-backed Grisoft Acquires German Anti-Malware Startup
Some security software consolidation underway. Czech Republic-based Grisoft, an anti-virus software developer, has acquired Ewido Networks, a two year old anti-malware provider, based in Germany.
This looks to be the first of several acquisitions, as Grisoft recently raised $52M from Intel Capital and Enterprise Investors, a fund that targets Eastern and Central European businesses.
Read - AAnti-Viren Spezialist GRISOFT übernimmt Anti-Malware Experten ewido networks
Read - GRISOFT Acquires Anti-malware Expert Ewido Networks
Posted at 01:50 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
April 06, 2006
3i's Takes Partial Exit on Magix
In a statement today, 3i, the UK based venture capital and buyout firm, provided some background on the Magix IPO, which we mentioned in an earlier post. The book was 13.2 times oversubscribed.
3i has been backing the Berlin-based software company for the past five years. It took the opportunity to divest 40% of its shares in the company which gave it 3.8 times money multiple on its original investment. It retains about 11% of Magix post-IPO.
The British VC's shows that it is a good time to be selling software companies.
The Magix IPO is the latest in "a string of successful investments and exits in the software industry for 3i", listing the IPO of Interhyp last year, the €50m sale of RedDot Solutions to Hummingbird, the €115m sale of Searchspace to Warburg Pincus, the €165m sale of PlaceWare to Microsoft, the €160m sale of Adaytum to Cognos and the €120m sale of Element5 to Digital River.
Read - German IPOs for Magix and SAF (a:c euro)
Posted at 11:07 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
German IPOs For Magix and SAF
Two software companies braved the capital market in Frankfurt today, the first software IPOs in several years, with share prices at the top end of their bookbuilding range. But in the early hours of trading both share prices fell slightly from their IPO emission price.
A snapshot of the IPO board for SAF
SAF, the smaller of the two companies, develops and sells logistics software. It went out on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange this morning at €17.60 per share at the top end of its bookbuilding range. But its share price shaved a few cents to €17.20 a few hours later.
The firm says its book was 8 times oversubscribed and that it had raised a total €48M, some €20.5M of which is new capital for the company, the rest, some €27.5M will go to old shareholders, including VCs and the founders. SAF is based in Switzerland, was founded in 1996 and employs 50 people.
Last year it posted a net profit of €2M on sales of €7.4M. The new capital will be used to expand customer base internationally. It was backed by New Value, a small Swiss fund, Ventizz, and funds managed by Avida, a German VC fund.
Magix, whose sales are almost 4 times that of SAF's, went out on the same exchange at €16.40 per share. It had fallen by 20cents a share to €16.20 per share by about 11am. (Update: It raised about €87M)
Last year the multimedia software vendor and ASP had sales €27.5M and EBIT of €4.9M. First quarter sales for the current year were €10.9M and EBIT of about €4M.
Read - IPO: SAF-Emission 8,6-fach überzeichnet
Read - Magix IPO takes shape (alarm:clock euro)
Posted at 10:16 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
April 05, 2006
BVGroup Back Expansion of Swiss E2E Technologies
BVGroup, a private equity firm in Bern, has invested SFr 5M in the expansion of Basel-based E2E Technologies. The investment gives BVGroup a 25 percent stake.
E2E is an 8 year old company that decided in the past year to package and sell software that it has been using for several years in projects in Switzerland. It is profitable and has been hiring up for an international expansion.
Its software is meant to ease systems integration projects, and is particularly strong in the SAP environment. From what we hear, a system integrator can do projects in shorter times and thereby improve their margin or lower their cost to be more competitive when bidding for projects.
Companies need E2E’s software to handle the kind of integration issues that erupt when two banks merge, or when a packaged food manufacturer wants to integrate its logistics system with its ERP system.
