Accelrys Buys Sweden’s Contur

San Diego-based Accelrys (NASDAQ: [[ticker:ACCL]]), which outlined its scientific Software-as-a-Service strategy for me just a couple months ago, says it has acquired privately-held Contur Software AB of Stockholm, Sweden, in a deal valued at $13.1 million. Accelrys says Contur provides Electronic Laboratory Notebook (ELN) software that enables scientific organizations to document their R&D. and to capture their intellectual property (IP). Contur, which offers its R&D documentation on a Software-as-a-Service model, says it has been especially popular among researchers in the food and beverage, chemical, and biotechnology industries, as well as academia. An Accelrys spokeswoman says the $13.1 million deal includes $500,000 to be paid upon reaching certain milestones.

Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.