Interesting, one of the top trends in Information Week is actually consistent with a trend in construction IT, that of consolidation. The publishers of Information Week are reporting record acquisitions within the technology community over the last two years. All of the large publicly traded companies certainly made news with their various multi-billion dollar purchases. However, for most in construction, the impact of those acquisitions was not felt.

Construction has seen its own share of voracious appetites by companies like Maxwell Systems, Sage, AutoDesk, Trimble and Explorer Software. This has removed a number of the smaller companies from the landscape though their products still exist. Its also begs the question, now what?

For some of these companies, the strategic integration of an acquired product or possibly customer base makes sense. However, in other cases the acquisition looks to be almost financially or market-share driven or perhaps a defensive play.

This industry is not new to acquisitions in software, some turning out okay while others hurt the customer base severely. All this activity does suggest that contractors pay attention to the underlying vendor company and ownership when evaluating new products and new vendors.