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CIO Executive Council

A Peer-Advisory Service and Professional Association for CIOs

Webcast: In the Google Apps Cloud: How to Achieve Your Business Objectives

Dec 3rd, '09, 1 - 2 pm US/Eastern (GMT-5)

Join Council member Brent Hoag, Director, Global IT, at JohnsonDiversey, as he discusses the adoption of Google Apps which has helped meet four corporate goals; sustainability, simplification, increased employee productivity and global collaboration.

Webcast: Collaboration Initiatives: Benchmarks & Best Practices

Dec 15th, '09, 4 - 5 pm US/Eastern (GMT-5)

Join Council members Ruth Thorpe, VP & CIO at the U.S. Pharmaceutical Operations of Sanofi-Aventis, and Gary Kuyper, CIO at Bethany Christian Services, as they speak about their collaboration initiatives and experiences in how and why they chose the social networking and collaboration tools they are using and their business goals for collaboration, and facing culture change challenges.

Data Overview: Collaboration Initiatives Field Guide: Benchmarks & Best Practices

This appendix to the Council Field Guide provides an analysis which discusses benchmarks for collaboration IT implementation costs, adoption rates and payoffs. The overview identifies top IT and business goals and satisfaction rates for collaboration initiatives as well as best practices and lessons learned for implementing collaboration IT.

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Microsoft Buys European Comparison Shopping Site for $486M

Microsoft has agreed to buy comparison shopping business Ciao in a deal worth around US$486 million, and plans to integrate the service into its Live Search sites, it announced Friday.

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By Peter Sayer

August 29, 2008 — IDG News Service —

Microsoft has agreed to buy comparison shopping business Ciao in a deal worth around US$486 million, and plans to integrate the service into its Live Search sites, it announced Friday.

The deal is a sign that Microsoft's commercial search ambitions extend to Europe, where Ciao is present in seven countries. Microsoft launched a comparison shopping and search reward site, Live Search cashback, for U.S. surfers in May this year.

The company said it expects to use Ciao to boost its MSN e-commerce services, in addition to incorporating Ciao's services into its Live Search sites.

Microsoft's $486 million offer for Ciao's parent company, Greenfield Online, tops that of a consortium led by private equity fund Quadrangle Group. In June, Greenfield made a definitive agreement to be acquired by Quadrangle for $426 million, and must now pay the consortium a $5 million fee to terminate that agreement.

Ciao, based in Munich, Germany, operates consumer review and comparison shopping portals in France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and the U.K.

In addition to the comparison shopping service, Greenfield also owns Ciao Surveys, which pays Internet users for responding to consumer surveys. Microsoft will sell that business to an unnamed buyer immediately upon acquiring Greenfield, it said.

Greenfield expects the transaction to close in the fourth quarter. The acquisition will still go ahead even if Microsoft is unable to find a buyer for the survey business, it said.

Microsoft plans that the Ciao business will report to Rajat Taneja, general manager for worldwide commercial search at Microsoft.

After the collapse of its attempt to buy Yahoo, Microsoft is desperate to boost use of its search services, which draws far fewer visitors than those of Google and Yahoo. Attracting surfers with the offer of rebates on their online purchases through Live Search cashback is just one of the ways it is trying to catch up. The acquisition of Ciao and its established user base may allow Microsoft to extend that approach to Europe. The cashback service was itself built on an acquisition, that of Jellyfish.com.

Yahoo has already acquired a French comparison shopping service, Kelkoo, which now operates in ten European countries, and also drives Yahoo's own-brand comparison shopping service in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the U.K. -- and Taiwan.

France is also home to PriceMinister, an independent comparison shopping service that operates in France and Spain.

Google's own comparison shopping service, has been renamed from Froogle to Google Products, but is still in beta testing and appears to be an English-language-only service.