Normally, I don’t cover acquisition stories because a lot of uncertainties come from such activities – what happens to the acquired company, its staff, its technologies, its IP and the customers that bought those solutions.
Horror stories include customers being left holding a dead product as the team that developed the acquired technology move on to other things.
I am not saying this is what will happen with the Keysight Technologies’ acquisition of Eggplant Software.
Eggplant uses artificial intelligence (AI) and analytics to automate test creation and test execution. The company claims its Digital Automation Intelligence platform can test any technology on any device, operating system or browser at any layer, from the user interface (UI) to application programming interfaces (APIs) to the database.
For its part, KeySight sells hardware and software used for test and measurement applications. Is the acquisition aimed at reducing the number of players in the marketplace? Is it to augment missing technology and IP within KeySight’s portfolio?
So FutureCIO asked Dr. John Bates, CEO of Eggplant, what he thought about the acquisition and what the value of such an acquisition was for another software vendor?
This is a global deal, how does this acquisition benefit enterprises in Asia?
Dr. John Bates: Keysight and Eggplant share a vision of helping customers get their products to market faster, with confidence. The combination of Keysight and Eggplant enables testing from the network and hardware, right through the application and user experience. This end-to-end quality, with a focus on customer experience and business outcomes, is a game-changer – and a supercharger for digital transformation.
In Asia, Eggplant now has a significantly enhanced opportunity to expand sales and support for Asian customers, through leveraging the Keysight Asian footprint.
Does eggplant software have customers in Asia prior to the acquisition? How will they be serviced after the acquisition?
Dr. John Bates: Eggplant has customers in Japan, China, Taiwan, Korea, Singapore and Malaysia. Major customers include NTT Docomo, Fujifilm and NEC Personal Computers. Industry sectors include financial services, automotive, telecommunications and gaming.
Eggplant will continue to run as a business unit of Keysight so will continue supporting customers as before. And as Eggplant is integrated over time into Keysight, this support will be scaled up through the Keysight organization, which has an extensive Asian footprint.
What will happen to the eggplant products/services?
Dr. John Bates: Eggplant will continue to offer the same ingenuity in our product designs and high level of service our customers have come to expect.
Will these be integrated into existing Keysight solutions, remain as standalone products or become part of a Keysight suite?
Dr. John Bates: Eggplant products will continue as before but will also be integrated into Keysight solutions. Keysight’s philosophy is to offer end-to-end solutions to business problems – and these solutions can include hardware, software and services. Eggplant’s intelligent software test automation platform will be able to be purchased as part of certain industry solutions but will also be used to enhance existing Keysight solutions.
Eggplant CEO, John Bates, will join the Keysight leadership team and report to Soon Chai Gooi, president of Keysight’s Electronic Industrial Solutions Group.
