IBM announced Monday (9 September) that it plans to acquire Accelalpha, a Washington-headquartered Oracle services provider that this year announced the launch/relaunch of an Oracle-based legal practice management system. On closing, the Accelalpha team will join IBM Consulting.
The history of Oracle’s legal PMS coming to market is complex. It was first announced as a soft launch in 2019 in association with PwC, and the first law firm to sign up was Kemp Little, however the UK law firm was acquired by Deloitte later that year and the deal did not go ahead. In 2021, Oracle formally launched the global legal enterprise resource planning system in partnership with Frontera. In 2022, Frontera merged with Accelalpha, and at ILTACON 2024, Accelalpha announced the launch of a new/rebranded Oracle PMS tailored for law firms.
Oracle has partnered with IBM for almost 40 years, and IBM is a leading Oracle implementation services partner worldwide. Jake Laliberte, director of global practice management solution at Accelalpha, told Legal IT Insider: “We will now have access to thousands of resources in 175 countries with our continued commitment to the legal market.” However for potential law firm ERP customers, IBM is undoubtedly something of a behemoth.
“IBM’s client and employee-centric culture and long-established scale and reach in more than 175 countries is a great fit for the next stage of our growth,” said Nat Ganesh, CEO, Accelalpha, who previously worked at Oracle. “We’re thrilled to bring our expertise in Oracle Cloud solutions and targeted domain and industry knowledge to bear together with IBM’s strength in generative AI and hybrid cloud. With Accelalpha’s history of being a pioneer in Oracle Cloud and IBM’s deep-rooted dedication to innovation that matters, we can further accelerate value creation for our clients.”
caroline@legaltechnology.com