Re: Sounds like the
Anytime an American “group” buys anything, it’s about making money, fast. Fuck everything and anyone, history, values, customs etc. etc.
Not always.
US venture firms such as Golden Gate provided the capital that bought the Micro Focus unit away from Merant in 2001, unwinding the disastrous Intersolv merger of 1998. Merant was already in a tailspin in 2001, and Micro Focus thrived, paid back Golden Gate, went public again, and eventually bought the remains of Merant (by buying Serena in 2016, after Serena bought Merant in 2004).
That was a Good Thing for Micro Focus. I was there. It also allowed Micro Focus to buy Borland, part of Compuware, and the CORBA vendors, and to merge with Attachmate Group – and it kept those products alive (with a handful of exceptions they're all still around), which as we all know is often not the case after ISV M&As. And keeping the products available, supported, and updated 1 is what really matters to customers.
The merger with the software side of HP was definitely shakier, but again the products were kept alive.
And then OpenText bought MF this year, and shareholders made some money, and those products continue to be available and developed. Acquisition is always worrying but so far things seem encouraging.
Business is often ugly, it's true. But that doesn't mean taking a company private is always the road to ruin. Merant under Greenfield was a basket case and being taken private saved Micro Focus. Running a business takes money and when a public software firm is struggling to keep shareholders happy, an acquisition is probably going to happen regardless. So taking what looks like the best opportunity2 is not failure or capitulation.
(While I was on the inside for all of the Micro Focus saga, everything here is public information or opinion.)
1MF is sometimes accused of being a software retirement home, but nearly all the product lines – even ones with relatively small market share that are overshadowed by our own competing products – have regular updates with fixes, enhancements, and new features. Visual COBOL is the flagship COBOL product, but ACU and RM still have a regular release cycle. Visibroker is the flagship ORB, but Orbix gets updates too. ArcSight is the flagship but Sentinel is still getting refreshes. And so on.
2Of course this will be a gamble. It's a type of stopping problem, like the Secretary Problem.