Microsoft ramps dealmaking for e-health

Posted Dec 11th 2009 2:30PM by Tom Taulli
Filed under: Microsoft (MSFT)

To get Microsoft's (MSFT) attention, a market needs to be huge. And, perhaps one of the largest is healthcare.

Even with Microsoft's technology and customer footprint, the industry has been tough to crack. So to get headway, the software giant is striking M&A deals.

The latest came this week: the purchase of Sentillion (the price tag was not disclosed).

Interestingly enough, Sentillion is a spin-off from HP (HPQ), which occurred back in 1998. Since then, the company has built a leadership position in the private identity and access management management market. That is, Sentillion makes it possible to ensure that the right medical person is using certain patient information. This is certainly critical in light of the strict government regulations. It also helps improve the level of care.

In other words, Sentillion's software requires lots of domain expertise and updates. Keep in mind that a license can easily cost $1 million or more.

What's more, Sentillion is nicely positioned to benefit from the digitization of medicine and the move to cloud computing. In other words, this deal should give Microsoft a jump-start in its e-healthcare efforts. This is definitely important since the company has fierce competitors in the space, such as IBM (IBM), Oracle (ORCL) and even Google (GOOG).

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including The Complete M&A Handbook.

Tags: goog, hpq, ibm, inthenews, msft, orcl, Sentillion