Analyst View of Recent Acquisition of e-Spirit by Crownpeak
Written by: Peter O’Neill, Research Director, Research in Action
Crownpeak Inc, has acquired the e-Spirit AG subsidiary from the German IT services provider adesso SE. This merger will combine the strengths of two long established vendors of DXM (also referred to as DXP) solutions with an aggregate experience of 42 years in the market. Both companies are Market Leaders in Research in Action's Vendor Selection Matrix for Digital Experience Management.
The new organization will have nearly 300 employees and a truly global footprint, with offices in North America (headquarters in Denver), Europe (London and Dortmund, Germany) plus Singapore to cover the APAC region.
The two vendors were compatible in that respect: Crownpeak is more North America centric with a good customer base there; e-Spirit started in Germany and the majority of their customer base is European.
Both companies have strong partner ecosystems in their home region, adding further opportunities for growth, including an agreement for adesso SE, with their 5,000 employees and 39 offices around Europe, to continue to implement projects with the complete product family.
There is some overlap in product offerings as both have a Content Management System and support Digital Experience Management, but there are several opportunities for synergy: in our analysis, Crownpeak is strong at B2C use cases, while e-Spirit is strong is B2B. While the Crownpeak product set is built on .NET technology and strongest of all in the content management aspects of DXM, the e Spirit software is built on Java technology and strongest for its AI-powered personalization, search and integrations into ecommerce platforms.
The initial impact of the merger will be to increase the global footprint and market reach for both DXM solutions. Due to the regional differences and target customer bases, there was little direct competition between the two vendors in the market.
Prior to this merger, Research in Action completed the Vendor Selection Matrix™ for Digital Experience Management. For this report, we first surveyed 1,500 practitioners about THEIR view of a vendor’s product, service, value-for-money, and ability to innovate. The vendors who score highly enough in the survey qualify to get into the Vendor Selection Matrix™ report (usually 15 to 20 vendors).
Then, that curated market feedback is flavored with a touch of industry analyst expertise to provide a more well-rounded recipe for successful vendor selection. The report helps bring all the vendor feedback together, providing a well-rounded scope of strategy and execution, along with customer success.
So, please read my Vendor Selection Matrix™ for Digital Experience Management to see why e-Spirit and Crownpeak were both ranked as Market Leaders in the global survey of 1,500 business decision-makers. And read the general insights about DXM and further comments on the merger of Crownpeak and e-Spirit, plus vendor profiles written by an experienced industry analyst.
Always keeping you informed! Peter O’Neill
Peter O‘Neill is an IT industry veteran with more than 39 years of experience in advising vendor and end-user clients and performing research-based consulting, combining strong research capabilities with comparative vendor assessments and actionable advice. He is most known for his 12 years of service at Forrester Research as industry analyst and research director. Most recently Peter managed Forrester’s research on B2B Marketing organization, process and automation topics, a worldwide team of 11 experienced analysts. Prior to his time at Forrester, Peter had worked for 20 years at Hewlett-Packard in Germany and the USA and then joined META Group (2001 – 2005) where he led the company’s Vendor Consulting Group across EMEA. Now, among other roles, he is Research Director for Marketing Automation at Research in Action.