Software AG


Founded in 1969, Software AG is an enterprise software company with over 10,000 enterprise customers in over 70 countries. The company is the second largest software vendor in Germany, and the seventh largest in Europe. Software AG is traded on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange under the symbol “SOW” and part of the technology index TecDAX.

History

The company was founded in 1969 by six young employees at the consulting firm AIV. One of the founders was the mathematician Peter Schnell, who later became chairman of the board for many years. ADABAS was launched in 1971 as a high performance transactional database management system. In 1979, Natural, a 4GL application development English-like language, that was mainly developed by Peter Pagé, was launched. The company continued to open offices and subsidiaries in North America, Japan, UK, France, Spain, Switzerland, Austria, Belgium and Saudi Arabia. By 1987, Software AG had around 500 employees, 12 subsidiaries in Europe and offices in more than 50 countries. In 1999, Software AG was listed on Frankfurt Stock Exchange and soon after the company released Tamino Information Server and Tamino XML Server.
In January 2005, Software AG acquired Sabratec Ltd, a privately held legacy integration vendor headquartered in Israel. This was followed by the acquisition of its Israeli distributor SPL software in March 2007 and the application modernization business of another Israeli company, Jacada in December 2007, which formed the basis for its research and development center in Israel.

The company launched Centrasite SOA Governance platform in 2006 and with the $546M acquisition of U.S. rival webMethods in 2007 Software AG became one of the leaders in enterprise service bus, business process management and service-oriented architecture product space.
In July 2009, Software AG announced a takeover offer for the Germany-based company IDS Scheer AG. Since February 2010, IDS Scheer is part of the Software AG Group. In October 2010, the company acquired New Jersey based Data Foundations, a leading master data management provider.
In May 2011, Software AG acquired Terracotta, Inc. and Metismo Ltd.
Terracotta Inc is a leader in the field of in-memory technology for high-performance applications and cloud services. Especially the middleware platform WebMethods should benefit from this acquisition.
Metismo Ltd. has an extremely flexible and versatile platform for the development of device-independent mobile applications. It enables design and development of applications and the automatic transformation in the different formats of mobile devices.
In April 2012, Software AG announced buying the British technology provider my-Channels.
With My-Channels, Software AG gained in-house access to universal messaging technology that allowed the company to transfer their data streams quickly and safely to the cloud and mobile applications.
In March 2013, Software AG invested in Berlin-based company metaquark, which is specialized in mobile solutions. The aim is to jointly develop the webMethods Mobile Suite of Software AG. This allowed the company to access especially to the innovative know-how of metaquark.
In April 2013, Software AG bought the US cloud platform provider LongJump. The Platform as a Service offers a range of ready-made modules and templates for building and running business applications in the public or private cloud settings.
On June 13, 2013, Software AG acquired alfabet AG. Alfabet is a leading software provider in the areas of "enterprise architecture" and "IT Portfolio Management" focusing on the planning and optimization of IT landscapes.
On June 13, 2013 Software AG announced that it has purchased the Apama Complex Event Processing Platform of Progress Software. The platform provides an environment for the design and operation of CEP applications providing tools and graphical analysis and test capabilities for analysts, developers and administrators.
Software AG acquired JackBe in August 2013 to serve as the foundation for its Intelligent Business Operations Platform, which provides analytics and decision management for real-time applications.
In December 2013, Software AG invested in big data analytics company Datameer, which offers self-service Big Data Analytics and "to follow cutting edge technology trends".
On March 27, 2017 Software AG announced the acquisition of Cumulocity GmbH, based in Düsseldorf, Germany.
On June 12, 2018 Software AG acquired the Belgian self-service analytics company, TrendMiner NV. TrendMiner specializes in visual data analytics for the manufacturing and process industry and will complement Software AG’s Cumulocity Internet of Things and Industry 4.0 product portfolio.

Corruption Allegations

In July 2017 allegations emerged in South Africa that Software AG made "kickback" payments by entering into questionable commission agreements with a Gupta-controlled company in the hope of securing lucrative state contracts.
"Software AG an internal investigation after a media report alleged it had paid kickbacks as part of a wide-ranging South African scandal..."

Products

Software AG is a business infrastructure software provider with products in various technologies like DBMS, application modernization, SOA, BPMS and ESB. Below are a few of their products on the market.
Software AG uses two main communities as a platform to interact with their customers and as a chance for customers to exchange their experiences with Software AG products. These communities are the ARIS Community, for the user group around ARIS, and the TECHcommunity, for user groups of the other products.

University Relations Program

Software AG's University Relations Program is dedicated to build ties within academia and the educational sector in general. Beside diverse events, it offers students and faculty free software in an effort to built an academic user group.