CDC Software’s Investment In Marketbright May Signal M&A Activity Within Automation Space
- Written by Andrew Gaffney
- Published in Feature Articles
CDC Software Corp., a publicly-traded provider of enterprise software applications which has been on an aggressive acquisition path, recently announced an agreement to make a strategic investment in marketing automation vendor Marketbright. In addition, CDC Software has agreed to develop a strategic relationship with Marketbright whereby both companies are expected to resell each other's solutions and potentially expand the relationship into other strategic activities.
This partnership and investment further expands CDC Software's rapidly growing cloud-based SaaS product portfolio. As part of the strategic relationship, CDC Software is expected to serve as an OEM, reseller or referral partner for Marketbright's SaaS marketing automation solutions in the U.S., Canada, EMEA, Asia/Pacific and the rest of world. In turn, Marketbright is expected to serve as an OEM, reseller or referral partner for CDC Pivotal CRM solutions in the U.S. and Canada. In addition, Marketbright plans to develop an integration tool for CDC Pivotal.
CDC Software's recent acquisitions are part of an "acquire, integrate, innovate and grow" strategy. The strategy has helped CDC Software expand to more than 6,000 customers worldwide within the manufacturing, distribution, transportation, retail, government, real estate, financial services, health care, and not-for-profit industries.
Marketbright also is reviewing shared services with CDC Software that may include managed hosting services, customer and technical support and with CDC Global Services' research and development and professional services operations.
"We are excited to partner with CDC Software since we believe that our products not only offer great synergies, but we can also leverage CDC Software's extensive global technology and support infrastructure, especially their high performance offshore operations, that offer compelling economies of scale," said Dom Lindars, CEO of Marketbright. "We expect that CDC Software's investment in us will provide us with the opportunity to strengthen our growth, while this partnership can offer our customers complementary solutions to further add value to their businesses."
San Bruno, CA-based Marketbright provides a suite of integrated applications including campaign management, email marketing, event management, social networking, landing page creation, lead scoring, lead nurturing and membership management. The privately-held company's investors include Greycroft Partners and Knight's Bridge Capital Partners, among others.
As part of the announcement, CDC Software and Marketbright indicated they may expand their relationship “such that Marketbright may eventually serve as an OEM and reseller for CDC Respond,” a complaint management system, CDC eCommerce, an on-demand e-Commerce platform for retailers and brand manufacturers, and CDC gomembers, SaaS enterprise solutions for not-for-profit, while CDC Software will sell the Marketbright connector tool for CDC Pivotal CRM implementations.
The strategic investment and strategic relationship with Marketbright are subject to legal review and the negotiation and execution of definitive documentation.