Active To Acquire Alier

In an effort to strengthen its data mapping technology and expand its presence in the financial services industry, Active Software Inc., a supplier of E-business application integration software, today disclosed plans to acquire Alier Inc., a vendor of systems integration software for banking and finance customers. The deal, a stock and cash transaction, is valued at $48 million.

The acquisition will give Active access to Alier's products for integrating financial systems with enterprise applications. "Alier has sophisticated mapping tools, top talented engineers, and a strong presence in London," which Active will leverage to serve its banking customers in the European market, says Jim Green, Active Software chairman and CEO.

Active Software will continue to sell both its ActiveWorks Integration System, which enables the rapid deployment of E-business, and Alier's Network Data Model, which defines financial instruments, such as derivatives, equities, and commodities using industry standards the Extensible Markup Language and the Unified Modeling Language.

An integrated product is currently under development, though the release date is not yet being disclosed. Green, however, says the development process should not be extensive because both products have similar underlying architectures and both are written in Java.