New bidder courts CRM specialist Onyx

CRM pioneer Onyx Software is the subject of a new acquisition bid, this time by CDC Software

Customer relationship management (CRM) pioneer Onyx Software is the subject of a new acquisition bid, this time by CDC Software, which owns Onyx’s old rival Pivotal.
Although Onyx earlier agreed to be bought for $92m by M2M Holdings, CDC said its offer was more attractive and realised more synergies because of the Pivotal connection and for other reasons.

"This potential combination harbours benefits for both shareholders and customers of Onyx, including complementary industry specialisation, products, geographic markets, sales channels and marketing strategies," said Eric Musser, executive vice-president of strategy, mergers and acquisitions, in a statement.

The CRM market has seen a lot of merger and acquisition activity in the last few years. Most recently, Oracle agreed to buy Telephony@Work to boost its call-centre credentials.

However, analyst firm Gartner yesterday warned that Oracle will “need to aggressively market the advantages of a combined solution to overcome the lack of demand for a synergised solution”.