Micro Focus Agrees to Acquire Relativity Technologies

Micro Focus International today announced its board of directors has reached an agreement to acquire Relativity Technologies, a provider of enterprise application modernization solutions, for approximately $9.7 million in cash.

 

By combining the business of Micro Focus and Relativity, the company can strengthen its position as a leading player in the fast growing, highly fragmented application modernization market, Micro Focus said. The partnership will also expand Micro Focus’ geographic reach, partner relationships and international customer base.

 

Micro Focus, a member of the FTSE 250, provides software solution to improve business value of their enterprise applications. Micro Focus Enterprise Application Modernization and Management software reportedly enables customers’ business applications to respond rapidly to market changes and embrace modern architectures with reduced cost and risk.

 

Relativity Technologies provides Modernization Workbench, which is recognized as the leading solution for extracting business and technical intelligence from existing application portfolios.

 

Modernization Workbench, according to Relativity Technologies, creates a centralized, always-current warehouse of business and technical intelligence about the applications that run a business. These insights enable the team to identify and execute development activities that re-align applications with business priorities.

 

The new partnership approval is subject to customary closing conditions and approval by Relativity shareholders, announced Micro Focus. The transaction is expected to close before the end of December 2008. 

 

Stephen Kelly, chief executive officer of Micro Focus International, said, “In this tough macroeconomic environment, CEOs are crying out to slash IT costs. Application Modernization projects – which provide payback in weeks – answer that call.”

 

Kelly further said the company is well placed to capture significant value from this acquisition. After completing the transaction, Relativity business will be fully integrated into the Micro Focus group, he added. 

 

“The acquisition of Relativity is consistent with Micro Focus’s strategy of acquiring companies that complement our core areas of expertise and where significant synergies can be derived,” Kelly further commented.

 

In a July announcement, Micro Focus said it has acquired Liant Software, a provider of software tools for developing business information systems and solutions to help transform existing business applications and processes into modern and robust distributed application software systems. With this acquisition, Micro Focus is equipped to offer customers a broad range of choices as they modernize their core IT systems to meet their business objectives.