**I2 Buys RightWorks, Kisses Off Ariba
After weeks of speculation and rumors, i2 Technologies Inc. is buying software maker RightWorks Corp. in an all-stock exchange valued at about $114 million. The deal gives RightWorks, which sells E-procurement and marketplace apps, a secure home and the marketing and sales muscle it never built on its own. The deal lets i2 sell to the thousands of businesses it never had access to as a back-office supply-chain vendor.
The transaction, which is expected to close by July, effectively ends any joint sales and marketing activities between i2 and Ariba Inc., say analysts. The two had announced a three-way partnership with IBM exactly a year ago that was supposed to create an E-commerce superpower. Ariba's buyout of Agile Software last month and a reseller relationship with Synra System had already undermined the partnership, though. The RightWorks deal seals its demise, analysts say. It's "a very telling sign [of] how short-lived software industry partnerships can be," says Kash
Rangan, an analyst at Dain Rauscher Wessels investment service.
The deal also is viewed as a harbinger of consolidation in
business-to-business E-commerce. Similar to the way that
enterprise resource planning software consolidated accounting, human-resource, and manufacturing applications in one integrated package, E-commerce firms will package online purchasing, supply-chain and sourcing. I2 says RightWorks apps will be integrated as part of its supplier-relationship-management line within 60 days. That line enables companies to share product designs with trading partners and find suppliers.
- Alorie Gilbert
From InformationWeek Daily for 9 March 2001 |
