SA-based Tilos has doubled its size and gained a European presence through a merger with German software company COSA.
A source close to the deal says the reason for the merger is to establish a solid footprint in Europe. COSA has offices in Cologne and Vianen in the Netherlands. In addition, Tilos has an office in the UK.
Tilos`s offerings occupy the smart enterprise suite (SES) niche, as defined by Gartner, together with the business process management (BPM) space. COSA also operates in the BPM area.
"We tried other strategies to get into the European market, and they didn`t fail, but they were going very slowly," says the source, adding that COSA, like Tilos, has about 50 employees.
The deal was carried out with the assistance of Tilos shareholder Ethos Private Equity.
In terms of the new structure, a South African holding company -- with Ethos as majority shareholder - will own Tilos and COSA, each of which have their own minority shareholders.
According to an official Tilos statement, the merged entity will trade as COSA.
The company source says the merger will not change operations fundamentally on either side. "We are predominantly Microsoft-focused in SA and they are predominantly Java."
The result of the merger is that the combined group will be the only European vendor with BPM and SES offerings on both Java/J2EE and .NET.
The source says there is no fear of job cuts. However, Tilos MD Victoria Vaksman is stepping down, with COSA CEO Dietmar Ley taking the helm of the combined group.
The official statement says the merged entity will first be jointly managed out of Johannesburg and Cologne, "with an overall structure to be concluded at a later date".
Ley has been managing partner and CEO of COSA since September. He founded the Ley training institute in 1979 and Software-Ley in 1983. Software-Ley was one of the pioneers in the workflow market and a forerunner of COSA.
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