From time to time, a customer or a prospect will ask for our balance sheet in order to make sure that we’re sufficiently funded (we are). Once satisfied with what they saw, many of them go on to ask the next logical question: “What is your exit strategy?” Since the IPO market for technology companies is essentially shut down, the very next question becomes: “Who will buy Intalio?” Now that we have something pretty cool going for us, we’re really not interested by a quick exit, which is precisely the reason why we brought new investors on board back in the Summer of 2007 (Partech International). We’re here to build a business, and could not care less about an exit strategy. So, the right question to ask really is: “Who will Intalio buy next?”

The first company we acquired was FiveSight Technologies, which gave us the PXE BPEL engine that was eventually donated to the Apache Software Foundation to serve as codebase for Apache ODE. This acquisition allowed us to return to an Open Source business model, and allowed us to transition from BPML to BPEL in about six months vs. a year or two. It was a success in every way possible.

Moving forward and equipped with a strong balance sheet, we’re looking at making many other such acquisitions. We’re looking at companies (or teams) that are small, have developed exceptional technologies that could fill a hole in our product stack, and are sharing our vision for an enterprise platform based on the COSMO model. If you know any that fits the bill, let us know. Here are some areas that we have a strong appetite for:

Stay tuned for further announcements…