SAP Ariba is an American

software Software is a set of computer programs and associated software documentation, documentation and data (computing), data. This is in contrast to Computer hardware, hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. ...

and

information technology Information technology (IT) is the use of computers to create, process, store, retrieve, and exchange all kinds of Data (computing), data . and information. IT forms part of information and communications technology (ICT). An information te ...

services company located in

Palo Alto, California Palo Alto (; Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a coastal redwood tree known as El Palo Alto. The city was es ...

. It was acquired by German software maker

SAP SE Sap is a fluid transported in xylem cells (vessel elements or tracheids) or phloem sieve tube elements of a plant. These cells transport water and nutrients throughout the plant. Sap is distinct from latex, resin, or cell sap; it is a sepa ...

for $4.3 billion in 2012.

Company beginnings

Ariba (now SAP Ariba) was founded in 1996 by Bobby Lent, Boris Putanec, Paul Touw, Rob Desantis, Ed Kinsey, Paul Hegarty, and Keith Krach on the idea of using the Internet to enable companies to facilitate and improve the

procurement Procurement is the method of discovering and agreeing to terms and purchasing goods, services, or other works from an external source, often with the use of a tendering or competitive bidding process. When a government agency buys goods or serv ...

process, which was paper-based, labor-intensive, and inefficient for large corporations. The name Ariba is a

neologism A neologism Greek νέο- ''néo''(="new") and λόγος /''lógos'' meaning "speech, utterance"] is a relatively recent or isolated term, word, or phrase that may be in the process of entering common use, but that has not been fully accepted int ...

, chosen by a branding company since it was easy to pronounce and spell. The pre-launch name was Procuresoft. Ariba went public in 1999 under Krach's leadership as CEO, and was one of the first business-to-business Internet companies to do an IPO. The company's stock more than tripled from the offering price on opening day, making the three-year-old company worth $4 billion. In 2000, the stock value continued to climb, and Ariba's market capitalization was as high as $40 billion. With the bursting of the

dot-com bubble The dot-com bubble (dot-com boom, tech bubble, or the Internet bubble) was a stock market bubble in the late 1990s, a period of massive growth in the use and adoption of the Internet. Between 1995 and its peak in March 2000, the Nasdaq Compo ...

, Ariba's stock price fell dramatically in July 2001 to its IPO level, where it remained for the rest of its life as an independent company.

Past acquisitions and competitors

On December 17, 1999, Ariba announced it would acquire Atlanta-based Tradex Technologies in a stock swap valued then at $1.86 billion. Tradex was the leader in the nascent Digital Marketplace Software field. The stock market liked the acquisition and the price of Ariba's shares rose from $57 at the time of the announcement to $173 at closing on March 9, 2000, which also marked the peak of the Internet Bubble. The 33.2 million shares that Ariba issued to buy Tradex were then worth $5.6 billion to Tradex shareholders. In January 2001 Ariba announced that it would acquire Agile Software in a $2.55 billion stock swap. By April, with Ariba facing a disappointing second quarter and cutting a third of its workforce, the deal had fallen apart. In early 2004, Ariba acquired FreeMarkets which gave the company a software package in the upstream (sourcing) of the sourcing process. In late 2007, Ariba bought the company Procuri for $93 million, which enhanced the company's client base and on-demand abilities. In December 2008, Ariba announced that the

U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas The United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas (in case citations, E.D. Tex.) is a federal court in the Fifth Circuit (except for patent claims and claims against the U.S. government under the Tucker Act, which are appealed to ...

had issued an injunction against Emptoris, which prohibits the company from infringing on two of Ariba's patents related to overtime and bid ceilings in

reverse auction A reverse auction (also known as buyer-determined auction or procurement auction) is a type of auction in which the traditional roles of buyer and seller are reversed. Thus, there is one buyer and many potential sellers. In an ordinary auction al ...

s. On 16 December 2008, the court ordered Emptoris to pay an enhanced damages award of $1.4 million for willful infringement in connection with Emptoris’ infringement of the two reverse auction-patents held by Ariba. This was in addition to the 29 October 2008 jury award of $5 million in damages to Ariba, bringing the total fine to approximately $6.4 million, a significant penalty for Emptoris which earned approximately $50 million in revenue for 2008. In an Emptoris press release, that company noted that it had released a new software "patch" that eliminates any infringement. The U.S. District Court, in February 2009, issued an order noting that the "patch" is colorably different, effectively concluding the case. In November, 2010, Ariba announced that it would acquire Quadrem, a privately held provider of one of the world's largest supply networks and on-demand supply management solutions. The acquisition closed in January 2011. In October, 2011 Ariba announced the acquisition of b-process, a privately held French company and European leader in electronic invoicing service provider, for approximately €35 million in cash. In April, 2013, Ariba partnered with

Medassets MedAssets, Inc. was an American healthcare performance improvement company. It provided products and services to 4,400 hospitals and 122,000 non-acute healthcare providers. The Alpharetta, Georgia based company had 15 offices across the United S ...

to "extend the latter's supply chain management and outsourced procurement functionalities".

AribaWeb

On February 19, 2009, Ariba announced AribaWeb, an open source framework for

Rich Web Applications A rich web application (originally called a rich Internet application, or RIA or installable Internet application) is a web application that has many of the characteristics of desktop application software. The concept is closely related to a sing ...

. It is designed to generate a

user interface In the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine f ...

automatically from base

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's mos ...

Groovy ''Groovy'' (or, less commonly, ''groovie'' or ''groovey'') is a slang colloquialism popular during the 1950s, '60s and '70s. It is roughly synonymous with words such as "excellent", "fashionable", or "amazing", depending on context. History The ...

classes and includes Object-Relational Mapping features. It also encapsulates

AJAX Ajax may refer to: Greek mythology and tragedy * Ajax the Great, a Greek mythological hero, son of King Telamon and Periboea * Ajax the Lesser, a Greek mythological hero, son of Oileus, the king of Locris * ''Ajax'' (play), by the ancient Gree ...

functionality and has a broad selection of UI widgets.

Ariba Product Suite

SAP Ariba now only sells the cloud version of product in the market and calls it SAP Ariba On Demand Suite of Applications. Customers using the On Premise versions will eventually have to migrate to the cloud version.

Acquisition by SAP

On May 22, 2012, the German business software maker

announced it planned to acquire Ariba for an estimated $4.3 billion. SAP said it would pay $45 a share.

JPMorgan Chase JPMorgan Chase & Co. is an American multinational investment bank and financial services holding company headquartered in New York City and incorporated in Delaware. As of 2022, JPMorgan Chase is the largest bank in the United States, the ...

and Deutsche Bank AG advised

on the sale, while

Morgan Stanley Morgan Stanley is an American multinational investment management and financial services company headquartered at 1585 Broadway in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. With offices in more than 41 countries and more than 75,000 employees, the fir ...

provided financial counsel to Ariba. Ariba's shareholders approved the acquisition on August 29, 2012, and it was completed on October 1, 2012, for $4.4 billion.

Customer Base

As of March 2022 SAP Ariba indicates that it currently supports 5.3 Million companies (between buyers and suppliers) on the "SAP B2B Network" transacting $3.75 trillion annually.

Partnerships

In January of 2022 SAP Ariba announced that it would be building a partnership with CLM specialist Icertis as well as taking minority stake within the company for an undisclosed amount. The two companies have committed to building a joint roadmap.

References

External links

*
Ariba SEC Filings
{{SAP SE Customer relationship management software companies American companies established in 1996 Software companies established in 1996 1996 establishments in California SAP SE acquisitions Software companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area Companies based in Palo Alto, California Companies formerly listed on the Nasdaq 2012 mergers and acquisitions 1999 initial public offerings American subsidiaries of foreign companies Software companies of the United States