India Rising

TCS launches a financial software division; plus, a narrow miss for H-1B visas, a hit for open source forecasts, a barrage of M&A deals and more software news of the week.

The fear of many enterprise software vendors is becoming increasingly real: Tata Consultancy Services is the latest services giant to move into the software sales business. In late May, the Indian offshoring giant formed Tata Financial Solutions to sell software directly to financial companies under the name, TCS Bancs.

Industry observers have long predicted that the major Indian offshorers would become software vendors themselves at some point. TCS is launching its financial solutions by combining internally developed products with offerings from two financial software companies it has purchased over the past two years.

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SANDHILL.COM BLOG POST OF THE WEEK:

Private Equity Monies Move Into Services Marketplace

Jeffrey Kaplan
With the recent announcements of private equity buyouts of network equipment maker, Avaya, and computer hardware and software distributor, CDW, speculation is escalating about where this new influx of investors will strike next within the information technology (IT) industry.

The deals come two weeks after computer and database services provider Acxiom Corp. agreed to be bought by Silver Lake Partners and ValueAct Capital Partners LP for about $2.24 billion. Now, some see Dell as a likely candidate, others are speculating about whether computer chip software design vendor Cadence will 'go private'.

I think a series of private equity deals will be aimed at a wide array of publicly-traded incumbent software vendors (ISVs) over the coming months.

Is Your Company the “Next Big Thing”?

Enterprise 2007, the tenth anniversary, invitation-only gathering of software CEOs will take place in July at Pebble Beach, Calif. The “Next Big Thing” session at Enterprise 2007 will showcase a hand-picked group of five up-and-coming software companies. The session has become one of the most successful at the conference – seven former “Next Big Thing” companies have been acquired for $2.5 billion. Click here to nominate a company to be one of 2007’s Next Big Thing companies.

This Week's M&As

Read the full list of recent M&A deals >>

The Week's VC Deals

Read the full list of recent VC deals >>

Software Execs on the Move: June 4, 2007

New executives step up at Kalido and other software companies.

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