CapeClear gets swallowed by WorkDay

I love it when predictions come true.

Hot off the presses is the news that CapeClear’s major partner in US, WorkDay, has swallowed them whole in an all Stock deal. Details are not yet available (nor will they ever be) but my bet is an all stock deal where the Cape Clear stock gets reverse into WorkDay Stock at a penal conversion ratio (100 to 1 ?).

The exit of the Director of Engineering, John Maughan, doesn’t bode well for the rest of the engineering team in Dublin, but Seamus in Silicon Valley must be pleased.

Annrai has the annoucement on the Cape Clear Blog.

I should add, that an exit is an exit. So many Irish Software companies exit via liquidation, so hats off to Annrai and Co. for getting this one across the line.

This deal may also make a lot of sense for WorkDay in the long run.

1. The get a pre-baked engineering team based in a geography they want to sell to (Europe)
2. The get access to Irish tax breaks (12.5% corporation tax)
3. If they play their cards right they get to book all EU revenue through Ireland (just like Google, Oracle, EBay and Microsoft) which turns the whole thing into a giant tax-incentive scheme. This demands that they have a substantial engineering component in Ireland (which bodes well for the existing developers).

More news at:

• Cape Clear Press Release : Workday Selects Cape Clear for SOA Integration
• Workday Press Release : Workday Launches Integration On Demand
• Marketwire : Workday launches Integration on Demand
• ZDNet : Dana Gardner : Middleware field consolidates in servics direction as Workday acquires Cape Clear
• ENN : Cape Clear signs on with Workday
• Silicon Republic: PeopleSoft founder buys Cape Clear (real info on redundancies)