An overview of the week in deals in the Irish and global technology sector.
Sage Pay acquires Dublin company Integral for €20m
Accounting software giant Sage’s payments division Sage Pay has acquired Dublin payments technology company Integral for €20m.
Integral will be rebranded as Sage Pay and will be fully integrated into the Sage Pay business. All of Integral’s 40 employees will be retained within Sage Pay.
Integral was founded in 1989, and provides services to SME retailers that have either standalone or integrated electronic point of sale (EPOS) payments requirements. Its solutions are used at more than 30,000 points-of-sale in the UK and Ireland and its platform has processed 87m transactions in the last 12 months, with a value of €5bn.
Integral specialises in transaction processing/switching services for SMEs via a centrally hosted platform that is integrated with all UK and Irish acquiring banks.
Sage Pay works with more than 36,000 businesses, providing both e-commerce and mail order/telephone order solutions. The acquisition of Integral will give Sage Pay the capability to integrate cardholder present solutions with its current e-commerce gateway, opening up new possibilities to provide connected multi-channel services.
This will enable customers to accept card payments however and wherever they run their businesses – be it online, in-store, at a trade show or from a market stall.
Unified comms player ShoreTel buys M5 Networks
IP telephony player ShoreTel has acquired M5 Networks, a pioneer in hosted unified comms, in a cash and shares deal valued at US$146.3m.
Under the term of the deal M5 shareholders will receive US$84m in cash and 9.5m shares of ShoreTel stock.
A further US$13.7m in ‘contingent payments’ may be paid over the next two years if certain performance milestones are met.
“The acquisition of M5 positions ShoreTel as a leader in the fast-growing cloud UC market and delivers a suite of hosted telephony solutions that is unmatched in the marketplace,” said Peter Blackmore, CEO of ShoreTel.
Irish online dating player snaps up Maybefriends.com
Webdev, the company behind Ireland’s largest online dating site Anotherfriend.com, has acquired another Irish dating site Maybefriends.com from Saongroup. The deals of the financial transaction have not been disclosed.
Gráinne Barry, managing director of Anotherfriend.com, said that the site currently has a 60pc market share of the Irish online dating market. She said that the acquisition of Maybefriends.com will enable Anotherfriend to provide a separate service offering to the Irish market.
Anotherfriend.com gets over 12.8 million page impressions and 290,000 unique visitors each month.
Oracle to acquire Taleo
Computer hardware systems and enterprise software products developer Oracle has entered into an agreement to acquire cloud-based talent management provider Taleo for about US$1.9bn, net of Taleo’s cash and debt.
The deal is expected to close mid-year 2012, subject to Taleo stockholder approval, certain regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions.
Taleo’s Talent Management Cloud is designed to help organisations attract, develop, motivate and retain staff to improve performance and drive growth.
Through the acquisition, the companies expect to create a comprehensive cloud offering for organisations to manage their human resource operations and employees’ careers.
Stay informed – get daily updates on the latest happenings in technology directly to your inbox.
