Cloud Revenue Jumps, Led by Microsoft and IBM (New
York Times: Bits)
New Philadelphia GameStop Policy Requires Customer Fingerprints When Trading In Games (CBS Philadelphia)
Comcast doubles broadband speeds in California, Midwest
(PC World)
Cloud Revenue Jumps, Led by Microsoft and IBM (New
York Times: Bits)
New Philadelphia GameStop Policy Requires Customer Fingerprints When Trading In Games (CBS Philadelphia)
Comcast doubles broadband speeds in California, Midwest
(PC World)
Hamilton-based Sparta Systems Acquired by Thoma Bravo, Staying in NJ
Esther Surden
Publisher & Editor, NJTechWeekly.com
On July 7, 2014, private equity firm Thoma Bravo (Chicago) announced it would be acquiring Hamilton-based Sparta Systems. The terms of the deal, which is expected to close in September, were not announced.
 |
Eileen Martinson spoke to the NJTC last year. | Courtesy NJTC |
"We are fully committed to remaining in New Jersey and have in fact begun the process to expand our current facility." Steven Ford, Chief Financial Officer of Sparta Systems told NJTechWeekly.com. This expansion is expected to be completed by early fall, 2014, and will increase our state of the art Hamilton headquarters by 25% to almost 40,000 square feet. The increased space will help us to continue attracting and accommodating top notch employees.
"The investment from Thoma Bravo, a pre-eminent private equity firm, will also fuel our accelerated growth plans organically by providing the resources need to target new industries, as well as inorganically through potential acquisitions to add to our product portfolio,” he added.
The company is a New Jersey Economic Development Authority (EDA) success story. In 2012 the EDA supported Sparta Systems with a Business Employment Incentive Program grant for just over $2.1 million and a Business Retention and Relocation Assistance grant for $184,500. The grants supported the company’s expansion in Hamilton, resulting at the time in the creation of an estimated 60 jobs and the retention of 82 existing jobs.
Already a private equity-owned company, Sparta Systems is being sold by private equity firms Summit Partners (Boston) and Altaris Capital Partners (New York), which invested in the company in 2006, according to an article on the website The Middle Market.
NJTechWeekly.com wrote about Sparta Systems when CEO Eileen Martinson spoke to the New Jersey Technology Council (NJTC) about how to turn around a stagnant company. Apparently her efforts have worked.
Martinson told the NJTC that middle-market companies — those valued at between $25 million and $1 billion — fuel much of the economic growth in the country. At that time she said when she had arrived at Sparta Systems, the company was “a little sleepy,” and she had thought she could do great things with it. “I started out at 8:30 a.m. [on] day one in a webcast to everyone, saying, ‘We are going to double in size during the next couple of years.’
“You have to go out there and set the bar high,” she noted, because if you set the bar at 10 percent growth, you’ll probably struggle to achieve 7 percent.
The press release announcing the acquisition says Sparta Systems now has more than 650,000 users in more than 30 countries. The company maintains an extensive customer base in many highly regulated industries, which includes the top 30 pharmaceutical firms and 12 of the top 15 medical-device and leading consumer-product and discrete manufacturing companies.
Regarding the acquisition, Martinson said, “Thoma Bravo’s investment allows us to continue our superior growth trajectory by strengthening our ability to deliver innovative solutions to customers faster as well as accelerate our vertical market growth.“I’m confident that this will enable us to not only enhance our current customer offerings but to be opportunistic about acquisitions that will add to our product portfolio,” concluded Martinson.
Ed. note: The deal closed before the end of July.
Esther Surden is Publisher and Editor of NJTechWeekly, and a contributor to Philly Tech News. This article originally appeared in NJTechWeekly, and is republished here with her permission.
Looks like Amazon’s CIA cloud is live (Gigaom)
Some SAP users remain unhappy with pricier Enterprise Support
(PC World)
Judge says Aereo ‘jumped the gun’ with emergency motion to be deemed a cable company (Fortune)
Exclusive: Comcast scouring Center City office market for more space (Philadelphia Business Journal)
Links 8/1/2014: Tableau continues to rocket forward; Oracle enters cloud service management biz through TOA Technologies deal
First shot fired by Oracle in cloud field service management bidding war? (Diginomica)
SunGard Announces Second Quarter 2014 Results (Business Wire)
Now consists primarily of SunGard Financial Systems.
Arris Braces For Customer Consolidation (Multichannel News)
FCC asked six more ISPs, content providers to reveal paid peering deals (Ars Technica)
Tableau revenue up 82 percent in Q2, ups 2014 guidance (Diginomica)
Tableau Software continues to grow, tops 1,500 employees (GeekWire)
French Upstart Makes Offer for T-Mobile USA (New York Times: DealBook)
SAP ties up with Apigee for API management (PC World)
Oracle buys TOA Technologies in strike against Salesforce.com (PC World)
Verizon’s Cloud Video Unit Connects With Comcast’s thePlatform (Multichannel News)
Time Warner Cable Earnings Trail Analysts’ Estimates
(Bloomberg)
Charter wants to bring cloud-based UI to all of its set-top boxes by 2015 (Gigaom)
TruePosition and Ericsson settle antitrust litigation (Thomson Reuters One)
Heartland Payment Systems to Acquire TouchNet Information Systems, Inc. (Business Wire)
Heartland paying $375 million.
Ad Analytics And Targeting Company Dstillery Raises $24M More For Mobile Growth (TechCrunch)
Led by NewSpring Capital.
CEO Who Sold Diapers.com to Amazon Raises $55 Million to Challenge Amazon Again (Re/code)
MentorTech Ventures invests, as it did in Diapers.com. Lore is a Penn alumni.
CVC in lead to buy Epicor for more than $3 billion: sources
(Reuters)
Epicor, a tier 2 ERP vendor, has a significant presence in Bensalem.
Report: Rue La La attracts Gilt Groupe for potential sale (Fortune)
Majority owner is Michael Rubin's Conshohocken-based Kynetic LLC.
Quintiq, supply chain planning and optimization software firm with joint HQ in Radnor, acquired for $336 million
Tom Paine
Follow @phillytechnews
Subscribe in a readerSubscribe to Philadelphia Tech News by Email
It must be difficult for a French firm to get a deal done just days before most of the country is readying to start its August vacation. But Dassaualt Systems managed to do just that last week when it announced the acquisition of Quintiq of Radnor and the Netherlands. Quintiq provides sophisticated supply chain planning and optimization software that solves issues for clients such as BAE, Canadian National, and the FAA. Dassault, which is an outgrowth of the aerospace firm of the same name, calls itself the ninth largest global software commpany with extensive experience in product lifecycle management software. Its American headquarters are in Waltham, MA.
Dassault paid US $336 million for privately held Quintiq, whose largest investors were
both Philadelphia area firms, LLR Partners and NewSpring Capital, which in 2011 said they had made a "significant" minority investment in the firm, with the remainder of ownership held by founders and employees. In 2013, Quintiq said it expected revenue to be in excess of
$100 million with 36% growth. That would imply a price/sales ratio of about 3.5, which
is fairly low given its growth dynamics, and suggests to me possibly either low margins or a recent glitch in growth.
Quntiq was founded in 1997 by CEO Victor Allis, a Dutch university professor, who is currently based out of Radnor. Quintiq established its first US office in Wayne in 2005, probably since a high percentage of its customers run SAP ERP. In a letter to the Quintig community regarding the acquisition, Allis points out that Dassault also owns Apriso, with which Quintiq expects some product integration to occur.
Quintiq and Dassault are planning a world tour to introduce the combined companies and
their capabilities, including a stop in Philadelphia on October 15.
Quintiq has about 800 employees. A report from a couple of years ago said Quintiq had 70
employees in the Philadelphia area, and I am trying to get an update on that from the company.
Links 7/28/2014: Dassault to buy Quintiq for $336 million
Dassault to buy planning software provider Quintiq (Reuters)
Likely a good return for LLR Partners and NewSpring Capital, which in which in 2011 made "made a significant minority investment" in the company. Dassualt will pay about US$336 million for Quntiq, which is jointly headquartered
in Radnor and in the Netherlands, and whose software helps companies solve complex supply
chain planning problems.
MeetMe Announces Expected Second Quarter 2014 Results (Business Wire)
MeetMe Prices $10 Million Public Offering of Common Stock (Business Wire)
Comcast's charity extends to friends and potential foes (Philadelphia Inquirer)
Apple touchscreen techie now aims to help West Chester startups (Philadelpia Business Journal)
SHOCK and AWS: The fall of Amazon's deflationary cloud (The Register)
Outside Voices: Why Google and Comcast are Headed on a Collision Course (Wall Street Journal: Blog)
Neat eyes life beyond scanners, shifts focus to software and cloud
(ZDNet)
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