The word is on the wires, and my new daddy is Rolta India.
Mumbai, July 29, 2008: Rolta, one of India's leading IT companies, today announced the signing of an agreement to acquire WhittmanHart Consulting, the consulting Division of WhittmanHart Inc., a premier Chicago based company providing value driven solutions in digital communications, process improvement, and enabling technologies, for over 20 years. WhittmanHart Consulting (WHC) is a management and technology consulting services firm that delivers solutions with a unique blend of industry relevance, business process innovation and technology expertise. The company is recognized today as an industry leading provider of consulting services in the Business Intelligence (BI) arena, particularly focused on the Hyperion software technology acquired by Oracle Corporation in 2007. WhittmanHart, Inc. will retain and continue to operate WhittmanHart Interactive, its leading interactive agency, in a standalone capacity.
I have a lot to learn about this particular deal, but in the 90 minute conference call we had yesterday I heard all of the right things said. My outlook is cautiously optimistic. Actually I'm more like enthusiastic but cautious, because basically everything I like about WhittmanHart has just had its capital boosted.
On the one hand, there are few things cooler than being part of a one billion dollar engineering services company, which is how I interpret Rolta. You can't get too far in oil&gas and GIS without having some serious brainage. That's all good. On the other hand, I've never heard of Rolta, have you? I get the feeling that where they're known, they are known well and do well, but elsewhere we'll have to beat down the anti-Indian body shop bias that many of us share in the industry. So we have some serious marketing to do in the US.
Suddenly, I note some very interesting points of synergy between the things I had been highlighting in my discussions with my perspective boss back a couple months ago, and the new synergies created by this asset acquisition. Still, I'm going to hold off patting myself on the back until after the Big Meeting.
So basically my take is this. Friendly takeover. Management synergy. Everything WH Consulting has been it remains, with a new big daddy, a serious, large, integrity-driven and brainy organization. It's definitely a different angle to BI, and the kind that a database guy like me is very excited about. I mean we're going to be doing BI integration with ESRI and such. That's super cool.
One more thing. There's an itch in my mind about the TUSC subsidiary that we're folding into. I swear that I've heard of them somehow, somewhere deep in my Oracle upbringing, but I just can't place them. I take them at their word that they are the premier tuners of Oracle RDBMS.
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