Autonomy Acquires Verity

Autonomy buys Verity in a cash deal totaling around $500 million. Search technology developers combine to take on rivals Google, Microsoft . Buying Verity increases Autonomy's scale and diversifies its revenue streams. The combination of Verity and Autonomy will provide customers with a broader and more powerful set of solutions that address the increasingly demanding requirements of information access. Verity acquired ultraseek from Inktomi couple of years back.Verity and Autonomy can rationalize complementary product capabilities and distribution channels on a global basis. Support for existing products would be maintained says Verity – I have always felt that these two products are naturally compatible as well . I do not want to write more on this as I know both these two companies well except to say that I expected Verity to make the purchase. The all cash deal shows who could take stronger position in the bargain. I think this is part of consolidation streak and clearly almost all companies aged upwards of six-seven years in the <200 Mn$ sales are surefire hurts/beneficiaries in the consolidation fever and almost all enterprises less than 500 Mn$ would be evaluating options, except for very niche players and those seeing growth. This wave of consolidation is not neccessarily a great development from a customer perspective - in terms of pricing and support. I also beleive that this would unleash a lot more entrepreneurism in the market - people and money are floating out now. Players upwards of 1 Bn$ sales would be looking at this from a different perspective of identifying the potential catch - I guess the name of the game is changing.