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By Sonya Rabbitte, 13 June 2001 13:00

NEWS Larry Mueller, CEO of Ariba, has denied the collapse of his company's $2.5bn takeover of e-procurement specialist Agile has left a hole in its future strategy. Mueller, who was appointed in April, said the collapse of the deal had forced the company to sort out its own e-procurement technology. Armed with details of the company's latest take on e-procurement at a conference in Monaco, Mueller said Ariba had plugged the gap left by the doomed deal, and was ready to strike out alone. "The cancellation of the Agile merger was the healthiest move for us. It forced us to take a look at our value chain management applications and see what we were missing," he said today on the European leg of Ariba's roadshow. Dismissing Ariba critics who claimed the company's focus on indirect procurement made it a 'one trick' show, he claimed Ariba was ready to move into direct procurement with its value chain management applications - with or without Agile. "A lot of people saw Agile as our ticket into direct materials. People made the mistake of thinking Agile was our whole strategy, but it was only a minor part," he said. But Agile technology could still feature in the Ariba suite as the two companies continue to work together as partners. The new value chain management applications, which offer greater direct procurement capabilities, accompany an internal reshuffle at Ariba, with the company now splitting into five divisions and opting to concentrate on particular vertical markets. Despite the rampant optimism Mueller was quick to slate competitors who, according to Global Marketing VP Michael Schmidt, have sabotaged Ariba's image. Defending Ariba's focus on indirect procurement, Mueller said complex B2B technology meant change would be slow in coming, even if some of his competitors didn't think so. He said: "i2 is making its merger with Rightworks and the move into e-procurement look easy. It's not. If it was so simple why did they have to buy the company, why didn't they just write the technology themselves?" And he vowed, as Ariba goes it alone, that the company is not for sale.