Uniface leaves Compuware

Compuware has just announced that Marlin Equity Partners is to acquire Compuware’s Changepoint, Professional Services and Uniface business units. Compuware is Michigan’s biggest computer company; the Michigan viewpoint is here.

This is part of Compuware’s ongoing reorganisation and follows the setting up of Covisint as a separate company recently. Uniface BV is a global company remaining headquartered in its current Amsterdam building (Compuware was headquartered in Detroit) and Marlin seems to have a good track record in such transactions. Adrian Gosbell, Director, Product Management and Product Marketing for Uniface Products, is very positive about the change; “Mandy Rice Davies applies”, of course, but it seems positive to me too.

I hope to find out more once the transaction completes (probably later in January) but my first impressions are that as Uniface has an interesting and useful product, and as it has been operating as an effectively independent business unit for some time, this shouldn’t make a lot of difference to Uniface users in the short term. I’ve not yet decided exactly what it might mean for Changepoint, but I believe that it will now be a separate company much as it was before Compuware acquired it.