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IBM today completed an acquisition to strengthen its IBM Connections enterprise collaboration offerings.
Armonk, NY-based IBM acquired the XCC technology from its partner, Cologne, Germany-based TIMETOACT GROUP. XCC is a digital workplace hub that IBM officials said will create a "single destination" personalized homepage for employees. The company made the announcement at its DNUG44 collaboration conference in Berlin this morning.
XCC's hub will be renamed the IBM Connections Engagement Center and will live under the portfolio of IBM Connections, IBM's enterprise collaboration suite that competes with the likes of Microsoft, Slack and Atlassian.
A Sign of More Consolidation to Come?
IBM's move comes in the same month of another major acquisition in the enterprise collaboration space: ESW Capital's acquisition of Jive Software for $462 million. In other significant acquisition news, Atlassian acquired task management provider Trello in January for $425 million.
Could IBM's move signal more consolidation to come in the space? Analysts predicted this in January.
After Atlassian's acquisition, analysts told CMSWire the industry could see increased consolidation, particularly with more enterprise collaboration chat providers buying asynchronous collaboration tools.
MyPOV great to see IBM investing in their collaboration platform. My analysis coming later today. #socbiz #FutureOfWork https://t.co/gllCcSSRfH
— Alan Lepofsky (@alanlepo) May 31, 2017
IBM Connections Engagement Center
IBM officials said the XCC addition brings IBM a "single, accessible engagement center for organizational news and content."
It will be a hub for employee communication, news sharing, embedded applications and other peer-to-peer collaboration, IBM officials said.
IBM Connections Engagement Center is expected to be available in the third quarter of 2017.
Officials said the XCC hub is designed to:
- Deliver news, content from senior executives and employees of all levels, resources, events, files, links and applications through a personalized site
- Create landing pages for senior executives that can be integrated into one view, and maintained by individual departments
- Allow users to create and maintain content that can be shared on the TIMETOACT GROUP product homepage
Inhi Cho Suh, general manager of collaboration solutions at IBM, promised TIMETOACT GROUP’s XCC will provide tools to "increase employee engagement and reduce content fragmentation."
@Inhicho on stage for the keynote at #DNUG44 @DNUG_Infos pic.twitter.com/CmpnhzkOI1
— Erik Wuestner (@efred) May 31, 2017
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Felix Binsack, founder and CEO of TIMETOACT GROUP, called the integration of XCC and IBM Connections "one platform for internal communications and enterprise collaboration alike."
Financial details of the deal were not disclosed. The company stated it would make pricing available for on-premises and cloud deployments in the coming months.
