Infosys Makes ERP Provider Panaya First Acquisition Under New Turnaround Chief

Infosys (INFY) has snapped up Panaya, an enterprise resource planning (ERP) automater, for some $200 million, the company’s first acquisition under new chief executive Vishal Sikka, a former SAP (SAP) executive board member brought in last June to shore up the IT services provider’s leaky ship and brain drain.

The India-based Infosys said the deal, which is expected to close at the end of March, will gain it Panaya’s CloudQuality suite, which enables businesses using SAP, Oracle (ORCL) and Salesforce (CRM) platforms to keep their systems up and running while testing new features.

“The acquisition of Panaya is a key step in renewing and differentiating our service lines,” said Sikka, Infosys chief executive and managing director.

He said the deal “will help amplify the potential of our people, freeing us from the drudgery of many repetitive tasks,” adding the CloudQuality technology will help “dramatically simplify the costs and complexities faced by businesses in managing their enterprise application landscapes.”

Panaya chief executive Doron Gerstel said Infosys’ “global reach, service footprint and broad customer base” will enhance CloudQuality’s market position to “uniquely position Infosys as the services leader in the enterprise application services market.”

Infosys, India’s third largest software services company, brought in Sikka, the first non-founder in the company’s history to serve as CEO, to overhaul its strategy and stabilize its executive suite, which has seen the departure of several key executives. In the last two years, some 13 senior executives reportedly have exited the company.

“When I started, there was a lot of turmoil and many senior managers left,” Sikka recently told Quartz. “One of our first priorities was to stabilize confidence,” he said.

Infosys outperformed market estimates for Q4, delivering a 13 percent year-over-year net profit while upping its operating margins by about 27 percent. The company projected up to 9 percent sales growth for the year ending in March.