Accelrys Acquires Irish Software Developer Qumas for $50M

San Diego scientific software developer Accelrys (NASDAQ: [[ticker:ACCL]]) says it has paid about $50 million in cash to acquire Qumas, an Irish specialist in compliance and quality management software.

The aquisition marks the fifth deal for Accelrys over the past two years, beginning with its $35 million buyout of Hopkinton, MA-based VelQuest and $30 million acquisition of Lafayette, CO-based Aegis Analytical Corp. in 2012. Accelrys bought the Swiss biosciences software company Vialis for $5 million and Fairfield, CA-based ChemSW for $15.3 million earlier this year.

Accelrys has about 640 employees worldwide, including 152 at its San Diego headquarters, according to a spokeswoman for the company. Qumas would add about 100 to the overall headcount, including 26 in the United States.

Accelrys provides scientific software and informatics technologies, which are used primarily in scientific research by industry and academic organizations. In recent years, the company has been expanding into product development and manufacturing, covering the entire lab-to-commercialization value chain. Accelry also is extending its reach beyond the pharmaceutical and biotech industries into such related industries as food and beverage, fine and specialty chemicals, oil and gas, and aerospace.

By integrating its enterprise software platform with more specialized scientific software applications, Accelrys says it is meeting customer demand to manage product development from benchtop to grave. The company says its approach ensures that its customers can manage their requirements for regulatory compliance and quality control more consistently across the entire product lifecycle.

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.