Computer Associates, based in Islandia, N.Y., will receive $88 million in cash for ACCPAC, company officials said. CA expects the sale to close by the end of February during the company's fourth fiscal quarter depending on regulatory approval.

Pleasanton, Calif.-based ACCPAC markets a variety of services and software, including accounting and customer-relationship software; warehouse management, manufacturing, Electronic Data Interchange services, as well as point-of-sale applications. The company serves more than 540,000 customers through more than 7,000 channel partners around the world.

ACCPAC recently updated its warehouse management system software.

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Sage Group, based in Newcastle upon Tyne in England, markets accounting and business-management software for small- and medium-sized businesses. It has about 5,500 employees and about 3 million customers worldwide.

In North America Sage markets its products under the name Best Software Inc., which serves about 1.8 million of Sage's total customer base.

With the sale, CA will focus on marketing enterprise management software including, security, storage, business intelligence, application development, portals and system-integration software. CA has spent the past several years selling off its business software applications.

In the spring, Computer Associates outlined its strategy for utility computing. To read the full story, click here.

"CA's strong commitment to addressing the enterprise management challenges of our customers has made us a world leader in our core management software markets," CA Chairman and CEO Sanjay Kumar said in a prepared statement.

"The sale of ACCPAC to Sage supports that focus—while providing opportunities for ACCPAC employees and transitioning customers to a company that is ideally positioned to care for them," Kumar said.

In April, 2002 CA sold Interbiz, its e-business applications division that marketed supply-chain management, financial management and human resource management applications to SSA Global Technologies Inc. It also sold off its line of banking applications.

Founded in 1976, CA has grown over the years mainly through the acquisition of a conglomeration of software companies. However, company spokesman Daniel Kaferle noted that CA hasn't made a major corporate acquisition over the past three years.

Perhaps not "major" enough to make Kaferle's list, Computer Associates in February purchased storage networking startup Netreon. To read the full story, click here.

Instead during that time the company has spent about $2 billion in research and development in house to expand its enterprise system management, security and related products, Kaferle said.

Kaferle said CA has no plans to make any major corporate acquisition. "We never say never," Kaferle said. But the only acquisitions the company has made recently have been small-scale purchases of technology to fill out its enterprise management lineup, he said.