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Thank you for your and Prism’s help with the sale of our business. I very much appreciated the professional manner in which you ensured continued progress, all the way through to completion. Throughout all discussions and negotiations the availability of your experience and expert advice, offered peace of mind and the perspective that we would arrive at a good outcome – which no doubt, we have.
It was a pleasure to work with you on this project, and I know who to turn to at the appropriate time with my next venture!
Christian Karg – Battery Force
In terms of recent activity, the major players have continued to swallow up smaller technology companies. Among these is Google continuing its current spending spree by acquiring PicNik, the on-line photo editing company and DocVerse, a software company. These take Google’s acquisition tally to eight since September last year. Interestingly DocVerse was set up by two veteran Microsoft employees to create web-based collaboration tools allowing Microsoft users to share documents on-line. It is directly competing with Microsoft who are yet to launch a similar service.
Another significant deal was IBM acquiring NISC (National Interest Security Company), a company that that offers a full range of services and solutions in areas of defense, healthcare, energy, logistics and security. IBM is looking to further strengthen their ability to deliver advanced analytics and IT solutions to the public sector. NISC, a privately-held company headquartered in Fairfax, Virginia, offers a full range of services and solutions in the areas of defense, health care, energy, logistics and security.
Also, software solutions company CA, has announced that is will acquire IT performance and availability monitoring software company Nimsoft in a massive $350m cash deal. The acquisition will allow CA to capture several growth market segments.
There have been some interesting developments closer to home also. With offices throughout the UK, Ireland and the Netherlands, K3, one of the UK’s leading suppliers of Microsoft based business solutions for the Supply Chain, has acquired two companies: DigiMIS and Pebblestone. DigiMIS, an Edinburgh and US based provider of cloud computing services, was bought for an initial consideration of £0.803m, payable in a mix of cash, loan notes and shares. Further consideration of up to £1.325m is to be paid through an earn-out linked to DigiMIS’s performance over the next two years. The acquisition provides K3 with hosting capabilities, in line with the Board’s objective to build K3’s managed services offering.
K3 also paid an initial consideration of €1.4m (£1.26m) for Pebblestone, payable in cash with a deferred consideration of €0.6m payable over the next five years. Pebblestone is a leading European provider of Microsoft Dynamics ERP solutions based in Rotterdam. K3 say is it a highly complementary synergistic acquisition which will be relocated and readily integrated with K3’s existing Dutch Retail Solutions business, K3 Nederland (which provides Microsoft Dynamics based business solutions to the retail sector). K3 believes that the combination of Pebblestone with K3 will help to accelerate the development of K3 Nederland, whose flagship customers include IKEA.
UK and US based IT solutions company SunGard has acquired Hosting 365, a Dublin, Ireland-based cloud computing and data centre services company for an undisclosed sum.