San Jose, Calif.-June 27, 2003-Agile Software Corporation (Nasdaq: AGIL), a leading provider of product lifecycle management (PLM) solutions, announced the acquisition of certain customer assets and intellectual property of privately-held MS2, Inc., provider of the product portfolio management solution, MS2 Accelerate. The acquisition builds upon Agile's product portfolio management offering, Agile(tm) Program Execution(tm). Agile will continue to support MS2 Accelerate customers, and offer a migration path for customers to Agile Program Execution. In addition, members of the MS2 Accelerate support and engineering team have joined Agile in order to ensure a smooth and uninterrupted transition for MS2 Accelerate customers.
"Interest in creating unified PLM environments that include portfolio management and project management software has grown steadily," stated Marc Halpern, research director, Gartner Research. "Early adopters of such environments have reported improved corporate performance through better processes for making decisions and focusing resources on the initiatives with the greatest ROI potential."
Launched in 1998, MS2 Accelerate integrated portfolio management with product development initiatives and financial information to provide an objective framework for evaluating programs and resource optimization, enabling companies to develop and deliver products faster. Customers common to Agile and MS2 include Aspect Communications, Brooks Automation, and Lucent.
"Aspect has been a long standing customer of both Agile and MS2, using Agile Product Collaboration(tm) and MS2 Accelerate to support and streamline the product development and new product introduction processes," said Gary Barnett, executive vice president, products, and chief technology officer, Aspect Communications. "With this announcement we anticipate that obvious synergies will develop which will allow for a more end-to-end collaborative solution that will benefit Agile's customers."
"Increasingly, PLM customers are looking for application suites from a single company," said Jeff Hudson, CEO of MS2. "The acquisition of MS2 Accelerate by Agile, recognized as the PLM leader in customer satisfaction and time-to-value, is good for customers and the industry."
"We are delighted to bring MS2 Accelerate customers, technology, and talent into the Agile fold," said Bryan Stolle, Agile CEO. "With this acquisition, we are expanding our position in the PLM market, particularly in the strategic area of portfolio management and program execution, and more importantly, we are increasing our base of world-class customers."
