Heard the news today that RuleBurst (an Australian BRMS vendor) has acquired Haley Systems (a US one). The press release makes a big point of the two companies shared focus on natural language rules and of their contrasting historical markets (Asia/Pacific and Europe v US).
I don’t have any more details beyond the publicly announced ones, though I am hoping to get briefed at some point, but a couple of things occur to me immediately:

• Will the combination be able to deliver the features now common in Business Rules Management Systems and Natural Language Processing?
  This was always the concern with Haley - that the combination was too much to ask for from a single fairly small company. Clearly the sale to RuleBurst could be said to have proven that this was a problem but perhaps the combined company will manage it.
• Will the two companies different geographic focuses become an asset, making them a worldwide player, or a liability, by creating tensions between different parts of what should now be a single development team?
• Will the combined company focus on decisions not rules
  This is a clear trend in the rules industry but it remains to be seen where RuleBurst falls on this.

Fascinating questions and ones I hope to post answers to shortly.

Related posts:

1. More thoughts on RuleBurst and Haley
2. The small impact of business rules on the big players
3. Business Rules, Domain-Specific Languages and Models
4. Bringing a business domain to bear on decisions
5. A reader asks… about development, business rules and model-driven development