Oceanus acquires IBM partner Erilis

UK enterprise IT provider Oceanus has purchased Sydney-based IBM FileNet shop Erilis in a bid to secure the expertise of its founder and the diagnostic tool he has developed.

The deal, formed on a decade-old relationship between Oceanus CEO Nick Rowley and Erilis founder David Alfredson, would see Alfredson become the managing director of Oceanus Australia.

Contracts were inked on 31 January and announced this week, after discussions with Erilis's customers and its vendor partner, IBM.

Financial terms of the acquisition could not be disclosed.

"David was known to the FileNet community," Rowley told CRN. "He is the most qualified from an education point of view."

Erilis was founded in 1999 and provides design, delivery and development services of IBM FileNet P8 solutions to customers such as Standard Chartered Bank and CoInvest.

Rowley planned to leverage Alfredson's knowledge of FileNet by having him deliver remote training sessions to staff in the UK.

Few changes were expected for Erilis's six Australian staff, besides the company's complete rebranding to Oceanus Australia by the end of 2010.

"There's no dramatic change to what we actually do," Alfredson told CRN. "We [Alfredson and Rowley] know each other; I think we've each got a pretty good idea of how the other works and share quite a few ideas."

Erilis had planned to introduce its new tool, the FileNet System Analyser, in April. The tool would help organisations manage their FileNet systems by capturing system configurations across multiple components and producing analytical reports.

Rowley saw the Analyser as an "offering that has global relevance ... something we can tie in as we develop solutions."

Oceanus planned to improve its offerings and expand its global reach to target what Gartner in 2009 said would be a US$5.1b (AUD$5.6b) global market for Enterprise Content Management (ECM) software by 2013.

"We're taking steps to actively move into geographies," Rowley said. "Being able to have a footprint in Asia Pacific gives us the opportunity to propagate our solutions into those regions."

Besides the Erilis acquisition, Oceanus also planned to incorporate a US startup in April in a bid for a global footprint and coverage of three timezones.

In the UK, Oceanus employed almost 30 staff directly. It also employed almost the same number indirectly through outsourced development work, marketing and support in locations such as India.

"I believe that with Oceanus we have the opportunity to merge our experience, and to integrate our IP, products, and implementation services for customers globally," Alfredson said.

"As a small company, we've been fairly opportunistic, able to more to do whatever pays the bills," he told CRN. "A larger company would have a more structured way of looking at the world.

"The acquisition will give us a much greater scope to grow, with more funding available to us," he said, citing plans to double its staffing numbers within the year.