Apama CEP platform to be acquired by Software AG
Software AG is buying Progress Software’s Apama complex event processing (CEP) platform for an undisclosed sum.
The Swiss headquartered firm will takeover the Apama sales and technical teams based around ‘silicon fen’ in Cambridge, UK, and the offices in Bedford, US, and Hyderabad in India, this quarter subject to the usual approvals.
Founded in 1999 by Cambridge PHD graduates, John Bates and Giles Nelson, Apama was sold to Progress Software for $25.4 million in 2005, before this latest acquisition, and it is likely a good return has been made. Its systems are used on the financial markets by traders, profit-seeking treasuries, hedgers and other financial market participants, particularly in regard to algorithmic trading applications, where CEP can help firms to analyse trends and data across multiple markets and asset classes in real-time. This can aid cash positioning, oversight and crucially the search for alpha and operational speed.
The need to improve its ‘big data’ processing capabilities is thought to be one of the major driving factors behind Software AG’s purchase of the Apama brand name, which will live on. It should be a good fit with the Swiss firm’s own low-latency messaging and in-memory chip technology, which also offers traders speed advantages.
The Apama CEP platform is typically used on risk and surveillance, as well as its core trading applications, but has recently been trying to expand into new areas, such as customer experience management and real-time fraud prevention.
StreamBase, another CEP vendor, was recently acquired by Tibco Software as the sector consolidates into major rival groupings.
Commenting on the latest Progress Apama sale, Robin Gilthorpe, the chief executive officer of the Terracotta line at Software AG, said: “This acquisition is a major step in delivering on our strategy of empowering enterprises to derive meaningful business insights and value from big data.”