Here’s an interesting snapshot of a Boston-area public tech company getting bought by a West Coast firm. In May, we reported that Southborough, MA-based Double-Take Software was being acquired by Vision Solutions, based in Irvine, CA, in a deal worth $242 million. Today, Vision is announcing that the acquisition has officially closed.
Double-Take (NASDAQ: [[ticker:DBTK]]) makes software for data protection and recovery, primarily for Microsoft Windows computer systems and Intel-based servers. Vision Solutions makes software for data availability and data management, mainly for IBM-based systems. That means they keep everything from websites and online services to video-gaming systems running smoothly in remote data centers. The merger means Vision Solutions can position itself as a dominant vendor for two of the biggest players in the IT world.
“This changes our business significantly,” says Alan Arnold, executive vice president and chief technology officer of Vision Solutions. “For us, it’s huge.”
Arnold adds that Vision Solutions has been looking to make an acquisition like this for several years. Vision has almost 800 employees and more than $100 million in annual revenue. Meanwhile, Double-Take is a roughly $85 million company that went public in late 2006.
Vision is owned by private equity firm Thoma Bravo. So it will be taking Double-Take private again, and has filed paperwork to de-list the company from the NASDAQ, Arnold says.
The future of the Double-Take office in Southborough is uncertain. Vision Solutions already has an office in Waltham, which has about 20 employees, while Double-Take actually has only a handful of employees in the Boston area. Most of its R&D staff and developers are based in Indiana and New Jersey.
Of course, integrating a company after any merger is tricky (I got some tips from IBM here). In the case of Double-Take and Vision Solutions, it sounds like a natural fit from a technology perspective. Both companies have long lineages and a strong focus on engineering and customers. The question is whether the merged company could be greater than the sum of its parts—and whether Vision Solutions could become a dominant player in the fields of data availability, protection, and management.
