“I want my team to look at the reliability of the organization. I’m interested in the financial stability of my vendor,” says
Steve Cooper, CIO at The American National Red Cross. “We make checklists where we look at the company’s financials for three-year
periods of time and ask, ‘Will this entity be viable in three years?’” says Cooper. “We have our own financial analysts, and
if it’s a public company, we look at their annual reports. If it’s a private company, we talk to the CFO and do more to get
customer references, particularly for smaller companies. The other checklist is for the viability of the code line. What’s
inside the product? Is it a combination of technology ingredients? Is it sitting on obsolete technology? Is it Web-enabled?
If both of those checklists are positive, then we feel pretty confident about the company and product.”
Rob Verratti, senior vice president at WestStar Bank, in Avon, Colo., adds that a knowledgeable buyer is one who can handle
the aftermath of an acquisition that leads to a falling off of attention to -- or elimination of -- a critical product.
“Ultimately, you can never protect yourself entirely. You can be proactive when you’re making an investment in technology
and get as much information about the company at the time. In the implementation phase -- and as you continue with upgrades
-- get as much documented information as possible in hand. Then, when the acquisition occurs, the better you can handle it,”
he says.
Close communication between an acquiring company and users of the acquired product is also important, according to users.
“In the case of Siebel, Oracle already had its own CRM packages, along with the PeopleSoft and JD Edwards packages. Now, Oracle
has three products in the same space. Do I care? Not really. I’m 99 percent confident that Oracle will maintain its CRM lines,”
says Cooper.
Cooper adds, “What we care about is, and what we expect is, that you’ll tell us what will happen to the [acquired] systems.
Will they merge product lines? Will one of the products be eliminated? And, give us some lead time. Don’t tell me six months
ahead of time. In twenty-four months, that’s fair; I can migrate to whatever is available.”
Bigger vendors, bigger worries
For IT managers trying to plan for the future, the volatile market can throw a monkey wrench into the most carefully wrought
plans. The fate of a user’s core product might be up in the air, leaving them uncertain about a technology in which they are
heavily invested. For example, months passed between Adobe’s announcement that it would acquire Macromedia and shareholder
approval and completion of the deal in August. That left a lot of users hanging, says Forrester’s Hamerman.
“Even the most prepared users can be left guessing what will happen after an acquisition. Now that Adobe’s acquisition of
Macromedia has been approved by shareholders, users hope they can move out of the holding pattern they have been in while
they wait for indications of what the company will do with its software,” Hamerman says.
Steve Nelson, CIO and director of information technologies at the Arizona Hospital and Healthcare Association, counts himself
as one user who is still in the dark about Adobe’s plans for the Macromedia product line.
E-mail
Printer Friendly
Reprints
(InfoWorld) - In the litigious world we live in, deploying a unified communications platform in your enterprise could...
