Nortel and Clarify

Paper Summary:

The October, 2000 announcement that Nortel Networks would enter the customer relationship management (CRM) application market by acquiring Clarify for more than $2 billion in stock stunned the majority of people. The question on everyone's mind was, "How can a hardware giant succeed with a software business?" The answer, coming only 18 months after the acquisition closed, was that it couldn't. This paper discusses the reasons behind Nortel's acquisition of Clarify, the factors in the market which led to the failure of the forecasted success and the results of Clarify's sale to Amdocs less than two years later.
The paper includes a diagram.

From the Paper:

"At the time of acquisition, Clarify had emerged as number two vendor of CRM Software, bested only by Siebel Systems. Revenues for Clarify's fiscal year ended in December 1998 were $130.5 million. The company had almost 800 employees in the Americas, Europe, and Asia. Broadvision was the number three supplier closely followed by Remedy. However, a new category of CRM competitors was emerging, companies that offer back-office software such as enterprise resource planning and supply chain management. These included PeopleSoft, SAP, and Oracle. Siebel Systems did not have back-office capabilities, but focused on providing tight integration with these software systems."

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