UK Library System Supplier DS, announced this week that "With immediate effect DS becomes part of the Axiell Library Group family of companies."

Axiell the Nordic Library Systems Group with, up until now, interests constrained to Sweden, Denmark and Finland, announced cooperation with DS  back in February.   This cooperation on Library 2.0 content management and portal platforms has so far resulted in their Arena product that got an outing at the LiS 2008 show last week.

I’m sure both sets of customers will welcome the assurance from Nigel Pegg, Managing Director of DS, that "Customers in both regions will see significant benefits".  One can only hope on their behalf that the merger of two organisations with separate product sets is also a little less uncomfortable than it has been for some previous mergers in the sector.

In a mature, everyone has got one, market where vendors are competing on functional minutia, and new coats of paint for public interfaces, for applications built on a core architecture that has not changed for years, you can either try to innovate or consolidate your way out of a difficult situation.  Time will tell which this current merger is leading towards.

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