Agilent buys Varian

[kimosabe]

WK, could you explain your post?

[Ron]

I'm assuming it refers to the preliminary approval the EU has given the merger based on Varian and Agilent agreeing to divest some products, and entering into negotiations with third parties to achieve this.

[WK]

Ron,

Yep. Got the corporate email notification yesterday.
Does the EU have some control on what I presume is largely a US merger?
This all shows how really global we have become.
I dont want to bother with the politics here! Cadbury's comes to mind!

WK

[Ron]

Both Varian and Agilent have a presence in Europe, not only sales but also some manufacturing, so the EU does have some control. Since both companies have to give up products that have a small market share and probably would have been dropped anyway, this works out well for both Agilent and Varian. Now it isn't their fault that these products won't be available from Agilent.

[WK]

Ron,
Pahh... Brussels. Edward Heath and all that....
Perhaps I can contact the EU commissioner for tech-support in the future.
WK

[AICMM]

I would think Chrompack would be a logical choice for the GC side so that will be interesting to watch.

Regarding tinkering, it has been my observation that it is even worse than Peter makes it out to be. It is not just that they build systems that are hard to tinker with, the majors simply don't want you tinkering as is evidenced by their lack of support for people who do. It's one of the reasons I still use 5890's before moving over to newer hardware.

Best regards.

[skunked_once]

Here is the latest news on the Agilent-Varian business deal.

http://www.rdmag.com/News/2010/03/Polic ... m-Agilent/

This looks good for the Varian folks, both the business and consumer ends.

[kimosabe]

Bruker is acquiring Varian's Lab GC, Quad GC-MS, & ICP-MS businesses.

http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zht ... highlight=

[Peter Apps]

If Bruker keep existing Varian support, for Varian customers in southern Africa that could work out very nicely indeed.

Peter

[dpr]

No mention of the Galaxie Suite in the above.

At least we have third party support for the existing revision.
Now waiting to see what happens to the product, not forgetting the guys in Grenoble.

[Ron]

I don't see how the Galaxie software could not be part of the deal, it is Varian specific. Besides that, Agilent already has two chromatography platforms, ChemStation and EZChrom Elite.

[srattier]

A lot of information about Galaxie, just search in the document 'Galaxie'.

http://ec.europa.eu/competition/mergers ... 212_en.pdf

[srattier]

At least we have third party support for the existing revision.
Now waiting to see what happens to the product, not forgetting the guys in Grenoble.

Hello dpr,
Thanks for worrying about guys in Grenoble. Don't worry, we are all still there.

[FunkyChicken]

I'm new to this forum and thought I'd jump in here as I've just had an interesting few days.

I've heard that Agilent is discontinuing all support for Varian GCs and Galaxie software and is "encouraging" me to switch to their latest chromatography software product called open lab. Not surprising I guess, but Agilent is insistent that I either change over my Varian 450GC to this open lab product or be left alone without support.

Then I heard from Bruker that they'll continue to support the GC and Galaxie and that Agilent is not telling me the whole story.

I understand the whole competition thing between Agilent and Bruker, and I'm guessing Agilent wants to squash Bruker's GC and GCMS business, but I hate being played and not told the whole truth.

Anyone else heard this?

[gcguy]

Further to the reply from FunkyChicken (cool name by the way) I found this...

http://www.bdal.com/products/ca-intro-page.html

GCguy