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Tuesday, January 9, 2007 |
Got a couple of updates before bed tonight (I'm in Bologna, Italy where it's after 11 pm as I write this).
You may have noticed in my brief news item about Indus International turning private and merging with MDSI that there was no mention of the new company. I noticed and asked my PR contact, Gary Frazier. His reply is that management decided not to mention anything about a new company name. New branding is coming, he assures me.
I figured Carl Henning was going to give me two "shots" in his PTO blog today, but he didn't mention that I'm a Buckeye (from Ohio, not a fan). I was on an airplane and missed the "big" game and the chance to razz my friends in Ohio who ARE rabid fans. By the way, my wife makes the buckeye candies every Christmas, and they are a big hit with her extended family. If you like peanut butter and chocolate (what's not to like there?), you like those. And they're so simple to make, I can do it. And my family roots for Michigan, but after two losses, they can take little solace in yet another Big Ten (or is it Little Ten?) defeat.
I'm in Italy to cover Thursday's Emerson Process wireless announcement. The trip is mostly paid for by Emerson (in our business, almost all companies pay for overseas travel either for us going or overseas journalists coming to the US). I've already seen some of the wireless experts around the hotel. The event is not a user conference as I originally thought, but it is a special press conference for European editors with two North American editors invited, too. Tomorrow evening things kick off with a trip to the Marconi museum here in Bologna--a fitting setting.
5:13:17 PM 
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Dave Harrold, a former colleague at Control Engineering and experienced process control guy, sent in this comment to my post about Rockwell's new migration strategy/products:
Hardware migration is the easy part. The hard part is preserving the customer's engineering investment--the control strategies? It's hard enough for a manufacturer to unravel and migrate software within their own systems. It's nearly impossible to do it across supplier platforms.
It's a good question. Almost every process control system supplier has a migration/evolution strategy. This comment got buried and I forgot to follow up. I'll see what Rockwell, and others, say about preserving intellectual property tied up on the legacy platform. Hey, you all read this blog--you can post comments, too.
12:25:19 PM
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Steve Yates commented on yesterday's post and helped me troubleshoot the source of the background noise in my last couple of podcasts. Could be noise from the processor fan. He had a great comment on my PowerBook G4: "That answers it, if you are using a Mac then it's just the Devil's Hissing ! They are not of this world :-)" I wear headphones (a Plantronics headset) so I don't hear it. I'll have to print out the stuff instead of reading it from the computer so I can back off. I record on the Mac through Skype (does a better job than my iRiver mp3 player, but that's great for hallway interviews--if I can trap the subjects, er interviewees).
12:18:29 PM
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Consolidation in the software market segment continues. Indus International Inc., an asset management software provider, MDSI Mobile Data Solutions Inc., provider of enterprise mobile workforce management software and Vista Equity Partners, a $1 billion private equity investment firm based in San Francisco have completed the merger of Indus and an affiliate of Vista under an agreement and plan of merger, dated October 20, 2006. Under terms of the agreement, Indus has been acquired by the affiliate of Vista in an all-cash transaction valued at approximately $240 million and will be combined with MDSI, a Vista portfolio company. The stockholders of Indus will receive $3.85 in cash in exchange for each share of Indus stock.
Greg Dukat, president and CEO of Indus International, will now serve as CEO of the combined company. Vince Burkett, MDSI's President and CEO, will now serve as COO of the new company. Corporate headquarters for the new company will reside in Atlanta, GA. The company will maintain its satellite offices in the United States, Canada, Europe and Asia-Pacific.
Credit Suisse has acted as financial advisor, and Alston & Bird LLP has acted as legal counsel to Indus for this transaction.
12:04:52 PM
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© Copyright 2007 Gary Mintchell.
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