Las Vegas - Recognizing the growing role of enterprise systems in assisting companies to meet the increasing challenges of corporate compliance and risk management, SAP AG is acquiring Virsa Systems Inc., a privately-held supplier of cross-enterprise compliance solutions. The announcement was made at Simplify, the 2006 Virsa Customer Conference, being held in Las Vegas.Founded in 1996, Virsa has more than 300 enterprise customers, many of which are global 1000 companies, across all major vertical market segments. SAP stated that the transaction with Virsa is continuing evidence of its strategy to use "fill-in" acquisitions to add to its broad solution offering by gaining specific technologies and capabilities that meet the needs of its customers, within industries or across industries, while maintaining its successful organic growth track record. Terms of the all-cash transaction were not disclosed.
"Across industry segments and global markets, organizations are under tremendous pressure to protect their brand and reputation while driving growth and shareholder value," said Shai Agassi, president of the product & technology group and executive board member, SAP AG. "Leading companies are looking to adopt an integrated view of governance, risk and compliance instead of the current reactive and fragmented approach. Acquiring Virsa extends the value of SAP applications and represents a key component of our strategy to be the primary source of enterprise risk management support, regardless of company size or industry segment. Virsa offers people, intellectual property and experience that will enhance the SAP customer experience and add immediate value for a strong cross-section of our customer base."
Virsa is the provider of compliance solutions that monitor and enforce business controls in real time across enterprise systems and legacy applications. Virsa solutions are designed to help customers maintain continuous compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA, Gramm-Leach-Bliley and other regulations.
SAP and Virsa already have a highly successful relationship at three levels:
Technology: Virsa solutions are designed and delivered on the SAP NetWeaver platform, making Virsa one of the more than 1,000 independent software vendors (ISVs) who have committed to build and market solutions on SAP's leading platform.
Go to Market: SAP and Virsa have been closely aligned in joint marketing, sales and product development activities. Since March 2005, SAP has been reselling Virsa's flagship product, Compliance Calibrator, as an add-on to mySAP ERP. In the one-year period since that agreement was announced, SAP and Virsa have partnered on more than 150 customer wins. Additionally, SAP Ventures is an investor in Virsa.
Customer/Vendor: SAP has one of the largest global deployments of Virsa's Compliance Calibrator and Access Enforcer, with more than 40,000 users around the world.
"Virsa established itself as an innovator by embedding compliance into business processes–making compliance repeatable, sustainable and less costly," said Jasvir Gill, CEO and founder, Virsa Systems Inc. "Together, SAP and Virsa are simplifying cross-enterprise compliance so that CEOs and CFOs can focus their core business instead of compliance. I'm excited for our employees to join the SAP team and for our customers who will benefit from accelerated innovation and enhanced governance, risk and compliance offerings from the world's leading business solutions provider."
In making the announcement, SAP stated that the acquisition is expected to be completed in May 2006 and is subject to the approval of the respective antitrust authorities. Headquartered in Fremont, Calif., Virsa employs nearly 250 people and has offices throughout the United States, as well as in the United Kingdom, Germany, India and Australia. While integration plans are now being explored, SAP said it intended to continue operations in these offices and that Virsa employees would become part of SAP America and the worldwide network of SAP Labs.
Source: SAP AG
