Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
Thank you, sir. (Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Brent Williams - The Benchmark Company.
Brent Williams - The Benchmark Company
The easy housekeeping question first - the amount of ARS that's on the balance sheet went up. Can you walk me through that?
Norman R. Robertson
That was related to the acquisition of IONA. They had some ARSs on their balance sheet.
Brent Williams - The Benchmark Company
And then can you give me a sense of how the large deal business in EID in general, maybe the IONA business in particular, did during the quarter and outlook any changes in the expected pipeline or close rates for larger deals for that business going forward into fiscal 2009?
Norman R. Robertson
The EI business, the pipelines have been good. The deals somewhat have been slowed a little bit because of signature requirements and people reevaluating what's in their capital spending, but so far the deals we expected to come through came through or are slightly a little bit behind where we anticipated. But as of right now we haven't seen deals being lost because of the economy, although they are being slowed down.
Richard D. Reidy
I'd also add that their fiscal year ends at the end of December, so there's still a lot of business that comes in for them normally in December that we're working on now.
Norman R. Robertson
Yes, Rick's addressing the IONA business there.
Brent Williams - The Benchmark Company
And then you had said in the subheadline to the press release that the IONA integration is nearly completed. What's left and how's that tracking relative to the schedule?
Richard D. Reidy
Well, the primary thing that's left is the systems, which have to be brought over to our systems, which is going to happen in January - February, Q1. So that will be the final integration piece, as well as we're still obviously merging people and stuff. But that's the primary big left in Q1.
Brent Williams - The Benchmark Company
And then, let's see, traditionally I have to ask a question about Apama. You called out again in the headline on the press release that that was particularly strong. Is there any sort of color that you can give there?
Richard D. Reidy
No, we were very pleased with the year we had in Apama overall and the quarter we had in Q4. Even in this rather turbulent times within capital markets, people are still looking to improve profitability and almost certainly manage risk, and that's a product that's perfectly suitable for that type of thing.
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