Company Graveyard

I had some occasion to dig through my archives. I forgot about a company that I used to do deals with. Well, several now that I think about it. They disappeared and I can't remember where they went.

The first is Sagent.
I was one of the guys who was around at the very beginning of Informatica. My strategy, even though I saw the beauty of their product, was to stick with the database vendor, Arbor. To my way of thinking, the tail could never wag the dog. The purpose of ETL was to serve databases, period. But in the years of ERP integration, that niche got pretty huge while Arbor stayed relatively small. But there was a lot of competition in those early days and Sagent was a big player.

DLJ
I can't remember if I have put together a list of banking consolidations recently, but I think that I did. To get political for a moment, it never fails to amaze me how often people forget how many companies fail. I cannot tell if I'm just more aware or if the pace is quickening, but Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns weren't the only investment firms that bit the dust. Paine Webber. Dean Witter. All swallowed or dead. Money always changes hands.