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July 15, 2008

Taking the company offshore

As a proud Australian I have long been  a big fan of the company Mincom, a software firm based in Brisbane. I have worked on their products a lot in the past and I continue to consider them to be among the best providers of enterprise level software in the EAM marketspace.

I recently read that Greg Clarke has been taken on as the new CEO of this company, which is good news, and that he plans to increase the offshore income from this company to surpass the 50% that it currently generates.

Great news, and I wish him well in this endeavor. However, last year it was bought out 100% by Fransisco Partners, so my interest in it succeeding as an Australian company has died down somewhat. But they still make good products, and deliver good, experience rich, services.

This is the general trend in consulting these days. Most remain in private hands, excluding the general public from purchasing the shares of the company. They either stay with the founder, until they pass away and hand it off, or they go to private equity either in the USA or (lately) int he Middle East.

This really annoys me because as a career member of this industry I would love to hold stock in  (say) Fransisco Partners. They own Primavera, Mincom, SMART Modular Technologies, and AKQA consulting. All fantastic companies with entrenched nich products and services, and generally a loyal client base.

However, there are of course a lot of options for consultants who wish to invest in what they know about. Accenture, IBM, SAP, ORACLE, Microsoft, are all fantastic opportunities generally. And there are many more.

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