SAP snaps up compliance outfit
Sarbanes-Oxley will cost you.
By Marc L. Songini, Computerworld | Published: 10:22, 04 April 2006
SAP has announced the buyout of Virsa Systems, whose products help centralise and standardise compliance and risk management processes over heterogeneous IT systems.
Virsa’s applications enable a company to monitor business processes and enforce policies to adhere to Sarbanes-Oxley, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) privacy statute, as well as other regulations.
The privately-held Virsa is based in California. SAP did not disclose the cost of the transaction, which is expected to close next month pending anti-trust review.
Virsa is already an SAP partner and has standardized on the latter’s NetWeaver technology stack. It has also been collaborating with the ERP vendor for joint marketing, sales and development activities. Since last year, SAP has been reselling Virsa’s flagship product, Compliance Calibrator, as an add-on to its own mySAP ERP suite. The two companies have taken on 150 joint customers since their marketing partnership began.
“Across industry segments and global markets, organisations are under tremendous pressure to protect their brand and reputation while driving growth and shareholder value,” Shai Agassi, president of the SAP product and technology group and an executive board member, said in a statement. “Leading companies are looking to adopt an integrated view of governance, risk and compliance instead of the current reactive and fragmented approach.”
Virsa technology embeds compliance into business processes, making them repeatable and less costly, according to Jasvir Gill, CEO and founder of Virsa. The partnership with SAP will help CEOs and CFOs focus on their core business instead of compliance, Gill said.
SAP expects the 250 or so Virsa workers to become employees of SAP America and SAP Labs.
