Persistent Systems to acquire CMS business of US-based Akumina

Also, Persistent VC arm invests $250,000 in Akumina's product business

Pune-headquartered Persistent System’s today announced that it has completed the acquisition of the digital content management solutions business of US-based Akumina. Persistent’s Venture Captial arm also announced an investment of $250,000 in Akumina’s product portfolio.

“The acquisition fits in our strategy of digital transformation. Akumina has two businesses, it has a product platform called InterChange and a services offering in the digital content management. We have acquired the services segment. They have a decent set of enterprise customers who come on board. Our VC arm will get equity holding in Akumina,” said Anand Deshpande, CMD, Persistent System’s.

For Persistent this will be its fourth acquisition in FY16. In the first quarter of FY16 Persistent had announced acquisition of three firms— Convirtue, RGen Solutions and Aepona Holdings.

Explaining the rationale for the acquisition, Deshpande added: “With this we get a good set of customers but more importantly Akumia was selling directly to the CMO segment in enterprises. This fits in out digital transformation strategy where we are selling to the line of business executives.” Persistent will take over customers and about 15 employees from Akumina’s services team.

“Digital content has exploded in all forms across enterprises and technologies for managing such content are at the core of marketing led digital transformation,” said Mike Stipe, Senior Vice President at Persistent. “Integral to those transformations is user experience that makes searching and managing enterprise content easy and effective. Akumina’s content management experts joining Persistent will enhance our ability to build disruptive experiences and innovative solutions for CMO led transformations for enterprises.”

The SharePoint ecosystem represents more than $12 billion in spending annually. With this relationship with Akumina and the recent acquisition of RGEN Solutions, Persistent Systems continues to strengthen its ability to assist clients in their digital transformation using Microsoft technologies.

Going ahead Deshpande said that the company will further make acquisitions. “We could not close any deals last year. This year so far we have closed four acquisitions, we are hoping we should close some more in the next six months,” he added.