A blog by Oleg Shilovitsky
Information & Comments about Engineering and Manufacturing Software

Arena PLM acquired Omnify Software: growth and cloud acquisitions

Arena PLM acquired Omnify Software: growth and cloud acquisitions
Oleg
Oleg
25 October, 2018 | 4 min for reading

Earlier today, Arena PLM shared the news about acquisition of Omnify Software. Omnify Software mentioned on thier twitter account – we are happy to join forces with Arena PLM.  Both companies have long history of PLM development and innovation in cloud, hosted and SaaS PLM.

Here is a passage from press release:

More than 1,000 manufacturing customers around the world use Arena to improve visibility and enhance collaboration, enabling dispersed teams to introduce innovative products rapidly and with fewer errors.

“Both Arena and Omnify share a long history of success in the PLM market with a strong customer orientation and a vision to help companies achieve their manufacturing goals,” said Arena CEO Craig Livingston. “We welcome and look forward to joining forces with Omnify’s talented and experienced staff and their customers.”

“While we have been a very profitable company for many years, we recognize the need to accelerate our growth and respond to market conditions,” said Omnify Software President Chuck Cimalore. “We evaluated numerous options with the goal of finding a partner who appreciates what we have built and shares our vision of the future. With Arena, not only will that goal be met but together, we will continue to build an industry leader that can meet the requirements of a wide range of customers.”

Press release speaks about joint development, acceleration of growth and industry experience. Arena Solutions and Omnify Software are long time competitors. Look in all online comparisons and you will find Arena Solution and Omnify Sofrware are positioning in the same segment of small to medium cloud PLM providers.

And here is industry overlap and composition based on G2 reviews.

And here is a comparison made by TEC Evaluation:

There are multiple reasons why acquisitions are happening between similar companies – money, access to new products and industry, vertical integration, sale or just buyout of competitor. So, what is behind Arena-Omnify acquisition?  My hunch – money and growth. Arena Solutions was  acquired by JMI Equity a year ago. Check press release here. New acquisition is the way to open non-organic growth. Here is a passage from Arena /JMI press release a year ago.

“We’re pleased to receive this investment from JMI and now have access to their expertise and industry network, which we believe will be critical to our continued growth and expansion,” said Craig Livingston, Chief Executive Officer of Arena. “This is the right time for our business to take its next step as we are in the midst of a sustained customer expansion and evolution of our industry-leading product platform. We’re excited to be working with the JMI team as their perspective and passion for our business are closely aligned with our own.”

Arena got money and expansion was at the air. Non-organic growth is the easiest way to increase value of the company and to bring more business. My hunch this is part of Arena strategy. Omnify PLM brings ~$5M revenues and expertise in multiple industries, which will fuel future growth of Arena.

The technological landscape of integration is interesting and might be complex. Arena PLM is only available as SaaS application, I can see Omnify PLM is available in three forms: (1) On-Premises Deployment; (2) SaaS/Hosted Deployment, (3) Cloud Deployment. The variety of Omnify deployment options is impressing. Still the plan of merge or integration is not clear.  Will Arena absorb Omnify Technology and merge it into a single product? Will Omnify customers will be requested to move to Arena? Will Omnify sell their product exclusively on premise and open to Arena products access to their customers?

What is my conclusion? Money is an ultimate goal of any acquisition. Both companies are operating in the same territory and speaking to the same people. So, acquisition is not very much surprising. However, here is a thing. How technologies will be integrated? Or they won’t? It is interesting to see how 20 years old cloud PLM from Arena will be absorbing Omnify PLM stack. It is probably one of the first PLM industry experiments of  combining two cloud-based (or hosted) products.The jury is still out. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

Disclaimer: I’m co-founder and CEO of OpenBOM developing cloud based bill of materials and inventory management tool for manufacturing companies, hardware startups and supply chain. My opinion can be unintentionally biased

Recent Posts

Also on BeyondPLM

4 6
9 February, 2016

I’m slowly digesting news from Solidworks World 2016, which took place last week. You can take a look on some...

28 October, 2014

  Few months ago, I posted about potential for Apple and IBM to open a door for mobile PLM future....

27 October, 2017

Single version of truth is a mantra sold by most of enterprise software vendors. PLM is included. I think, PLM...

13 June, 2017

Experience is a new mantra in our world. Software vendors are taking it sometimes to extremes by starting to offer...

29 December, 2008

It has become obvious – social software has made revolutionary changes in our mind. Flickr, Twittter, MySpace, Facebook and many...

22 December, 2014

Few month ago, I shared the story of True & co – company actively experimenting and leveraging data science to...

4 October, 2010

Last week I had a chance to speak with Andy Sherlock of ShapeSpace. My momentary interest was caught by a...

7 July, 2009

I think everybody wants to be open these days. We are moving from the closed world to the open world....

28 April, 2019

Digitalization is one of these words that we hear more often these days. The term is used very broadly. Here...

Blogroll

To the top