Workday buys Cape Clear for integration software on demand

Hosted business application provider Workday said Wednesday that it has acquired Cape Clear to create an integration on-demand offering.

Financial terms were not disclosed.

Launched in 2006 by PeopleSoft founder Dave Duffield, Workday sells online versions of traditional ERP business applications, such as human resources management and accounting.

Cape Clear's standards-based integration software, called an enterprise service bus (ESB), will form the basis for an integration on-demand offering the company plans to add to its products. The integration service will allow people to exchange information between Workday applications and those from other providers, including Microsoft Office programs.

Workday said it would continue to support Cape Clear's existing customers who use the software on-premise. Cape Clear founder and CEO Annrai O'Toole will join the company as vice president of integration.

Started in 2001, Dublin, Ireland-based Cape Clear was one of the first companies to build a product on nascent Web services communications protocols. Its job got harder once all of the large software providers built their own ESBs.

In his blog, O'Toole said the acquisition signals how integration software technology is essential to on-demand software and services-oriented architectures.

"It is this vision, that integration is at the heart of hosted applications--and not an on premise, bolt-on like other enterprise vendors believe--that separates us from the rest of the pack," he wrote.