IBM Reaches Agreement to Acquire Unica

Today, I am pleased to announce that we’ve just signed a definitive agreement to be acquired by IBM. I believe this new relationship is great news for Unica’s customers, partners, employees, and shareholders, as well as for IBM.

When we founded Unica back in 1992, we had a modest ambition that grew over time.  But even in the beginning we wanted to build a company of significance.  By this we meant a company that is the leader in its target market, has healthy financials, is known for strong customer success, and is a great place to work.  Based on early success, our focused narrowed to marketing software solutions, and with your help and hard work, we have grown from three employees to 500, increased our customer count to well over 1500, and have played an important role in creating and growing the Enterprise Marketing Management market.

For Unica, merging with IBM is a strong validation of our strategy.  It demonstrates the growing importance of marketing technology as a key driver of business growth across all industries.  Together we not only have the industry’s best products, but also the opportunity to leverage IBM’s large global distribution force that reaches all marketers around the world.  The next chapter for Unica, as part of IBM, will be about redefining the marketing technology space and helping even more companies and partners improve the ways they interact with their own customers and fuel business growth.

For IBM, Unica provides a strong product set, solid customer base, and deep market expertise, enhancing their marketing solutions offerings.  Our joint objective is to focus on the needs of the marketing professionals and their desire to optimize marketing and deliver compelling customer experiences – building on and extending our “interactive marketing” product lines.

Unica will become part of IBM’s Software Solutions Group, offering solutions that enable marketing success as well as helping to bring to clients the larger IBM portfolio of solutions

This acquisition is subject to certain regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions, which we expect to complete in the next few months.  In the meantime, we will continue to operate as an independent company, and we will remain focused on ensuring strong and positive relationships with our customers around the globe.

Personally, I am very excited by the opportunity to work with IBM. Over the past 20 years together with you our customers and partners, we have built a very significant company dedicated to improving marketing and marketing technology. I look forward to being a key part of the IBM team, both learning from them and guiding them in their marketing solutions business.

Here is a link to the press release.

Here is a link to an FAQ document.