SAP AG, the German multinational software corporation that makes enterprise software to manage business operations and customer relations, said in a statement on March 26, that it was purchasing Fieldglass. This is in line with SAP’s continued aggressive growth of its Internet-based services offerings. If all goes according to plan, the transaction is expected to close sometime in the second quarter.
Fieldglass is a software company based in Chicago, IL. This is a company that provides a Vendor Management System (VMS) called Fieldglass VMS. It is a cloud-based technology which is used to procure and manage the non-employee workforce. This includes contingent workers and services such as Statement of Work (SOW) projects, offshore labor and independent contractors.
The plan is for SAP to combine Fieldglass’ software with Ariba’s cloud procurement offerings and its SuccessFactors’ cloud HR products. The goal of combining these two products is that together SAP will be able to deliver a platform for businesses to manage their entire workforce of both temporary and permanent staff.
The acquisition of Fieldglass comes on the heels of SAP striking a reseller deal with Adobe which is related to Adobe’s Marketing Cloud online ad tech platform. Marketing Cloud will be packaged with SAP’s Hana in-memory database and hybris e-commerce infrastructure software to marketers.
There was some expectation that SAP would continue its aggressive forward push by purchasing Marketo. This is a company that makes marketing automation software. However, its collaboration with Adobe might put an end to that possibility.
In June 2013, Adobe purchased Neolane for $600 million in cash. Neolane, whose acquisition comes a year after Adobe paid $400 million to buy online ad buying platform Efficient Frontier, develops software that lets businesses integrate offline and offline data to create automated ad campaigns. Neolane competes with Marketo.
Except for the information stating that SAP acquired Fieldglass, there are no real details to pass along at this time. I can tell you that according to an article Bloomberg reported that in a press release SAP mentioned that it was working on and would soon be announcing a $1 billion plus acquisition.
