Microsoft in $1.1bn Great Plains deal

Great Plains, provider of mid-market business connectivity solutions for financial departments, will help integrate technologies for Microsoft .NET platform.

The deal will be structured as a stock purchase, with each share of Great Plains being exchanged for 1.1 shares of Microsoft common stock.

Jeff Raikes, productivity and business services group vice president at Microsoft, said in a prepared statement: "We realised that by joining forces we'll be able to offer a more complete offering."

Doug Burgum, CEO of Great Plains, added: "We look forward to reaching more customers through Microsoft's global sales and marketing reach, and to using Microsoft's development and technical resources to deliver solutions to customers and partners."

Great Plains' revenue for the first quarter of fiscal 2001 was $67.1m, a 68 per cent increase over the same period last fiscal year.

Microsoft shares on the Nasdaq in early trading were up 4.2 per cent to $41 following the announcement. Still suffering from the recent profits warning, they are 66 per cent down on a 52-week high of $119.94.