Allurent, Previously Reported Closed, Finds New Life at Jenzabar

This is a startup survival story for the books. Allurent, which the tech media reported as defunct last month, has gotten new life through an acquisition by Boston-based Jenzabar, a maker of higher education enterprise software. What’s more, Allurent, which develops interactive widgets for enhancing e-commerce storefronts, never stopped doing business, says Jenzabar CEO Robert Maginn. The acquisition was first reported by Dow Jones VentureWire today.

Jenzabar and Allurent have been connected long before this deal, in which Jenzabar will own 100 percent of Allurent and will invest a “seven-figure sum” in Allurent over the next 12 months, according to Maginn. The exact dollar value of the deal was not disclosed. Allurent was founded in 2005 by a group of veterans from Art Technology Group (NASDAQ: [[ticker:ARTG]]), the e-commerce software maker that sold to Oracle (NASDAQ: [[ticker:ORCL]]) late last year for $1 billion. Maginn was an investor in ATG and Allurent, which raised about $14 million, through his investing vehicle New Media Investors.

“The only mistake they really made was not anticipating that the economy was going to come crashing down,” says Maginn of Allurent, which had shrunk in recent years and saw an acquisition deal fall through in the fall of 2010, leading to the reports of its demise. “I was surprised when the deal they were set to do in September and October abruptly fell apart. We had to take a step back and think about the Allurent business and potential applications to our business.” Jenzabar started putting together a deal with Allurent late last year, and even hired on some of the staffers to work on Jenzabar, he says.

Through the deal, Allurent will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Jenzabar, which makes software that powers and supports “every office you can think of on campus,” from admissions to billing to financial aid, Maginn says. The technology also powers online courses and e-commerce sites for selling university paraphernalia. Allurent’s products will help make the e-commerce applications with Jenzabar more interactive, and Jenzabar vice president Chris Hartigan will act as general manager of Allurent. Meanwhile, Allurent will

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Author: Erin Kutz

Erin Kutz has a background in covering business, politics and general news. She holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Boston University. Erin previously worked in the Boston bureau of Reuters, where she wrote articles on the investment management and mutual fund industries. While in college, she researched for USA Today reporter Jayne O’Donnell’s book, Gen Buy: How Tweens, Teens and Twenty-Somethings Are Revolutionizing Retail. She also spent a semester in Washington, DC, reporting Capitol Hill stories as a correspondent for two Connecticut newspapers and interning in the Money section of USA Today, where she assisted with coverage on the retail and small business beats. Erin got her first taste of reporting at Boston University’s independent student newspaper, as a city section reporter and fact checker and editor of the paper’s weekly business section.