What Does GSI Commerce Really Want From Intershop?
May 14th, 2010 by admin
A very lively debate erupted from this question on Exciting Commerces German language blog last week. A secret project is in the works at the Intershop Tower in the former East German city of Jena. A project so secret that practically everyone is talking about it. With high priority, Intershop is developing a new e-commerce platform for GSI Commerce. Enfinity 7 is going to be a sort of Demandware 2 for GSI.
Picture of What Does GSI Commerce Really Want From Intershop? [source:excitingcommerce.com]
Since GSI Commerce announced their significant investment in Intershop in the middle of April, the industry has been speculating over the logic of this alliance. For both parties, there should be by far better partners available.
Brian Walker from Forrester Research went further in his analysis published last week. The investment is a defacto takeover (GSI Gains Control Of Intershop: What It Means):
“With a relatively small ownership stake of 10.5%, GSI will have significant influence over Intershop, due to Intershops very diluted and diverse stockholder base.
This gives GSI control over one of the oldest and most established eCommerce software solutions in Western and Central Europe.
Additionally, under the agreement GSI will have exclusive rights to distribute Intershops solutions in the Americas and also have access to Intershops software, engineering talent, and integration experience.”
“GSI began a very ambitious systems overhaul effort in late 2008, with the goal to improve the core platform and overcome some of the system limitations that frustrated its clients and affected its bottom line.
With this investment, GSI gains Intershop technology, which can be used in selective fashion, such as within product information management; CMS integrations; order management; and B2B-specific capabilities such as purchase-order management and distribution support.
In my view, there will be a long-term effort to integrate the Intershop offering into the GSI hosted environment, but this will not happen quickly.
GSI will likely leverage pieces of the Intershop applications to improve its core platform as it continues to work to execute a critical road map for its clients.”
The German Thringer Allgemeine newspaper may have said it best (GE/EN):
With the entrance of this investor, the secret which was discussed in the companys extraordinary general assembly in May can now be aired out.
Michael Sauer, who was forced there to withdraw from the supervisory board, was evidently an opponent of the deal. He was forbidden to inform the shareholders about some business which was not further identified.
Behind the scenes there are already developers working on the integration with the GSI system.
Intershop submitted their annual report some weeks ago. In it there is no mention of the current agreement.
The Shop Exchange: GSI Commerce Takes 12.6% Share of Intershop GSI Grabs RueLaLa/SmartBargains for $350 Million TheBakery: How Intershop Wants To Lead the Trade Revolution
Originally posted in German by Jochen Krisch, adapted for excitingcommerce.com by Jason Soo.[source:excitingcommerce.com]
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