Enterprise software vendor Semotus Solutions Inc. has acquired Expand Beyond Corp., which makes a family of products called PocketDBA for monitoring databases remotely from a wireless device, the companies said on Tuesday.
The all-stock transaction was approved by both companies’ boards of directors and a majority of Expand Beyond shareholders, they said. Expand Beyond, in Chicago, is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Semotus, in Los Gatos, California. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Semotus develops software used to deliver information wirelessly from back-end systems to devices used by employees in the field. One of its main products, Global Market Pro, is for stock traders and other financial workers.
Expand Beyond’s PocketDBA software is for remotely managing databases from Oracle Corp., Microsoft Corp. and NCR Corp.’s Teradata division. It also makes PocketAdmin, for managing e-mail servers and other systems, and a development framework called XBanywhere, for adding Web and mobile interfaces to desktop applications.
Semotus plans to use XBanywhere to develop additional Web-based handheld applications, the company said in the statement. It also hopes to grow its revenue by marketing its existing products to Expand Beyond’s customers.
Semotus also gains Expand Beyond’s portfolio of patents. One of those, awarded late last year, describes “a system, method or apparatus for the wireless monitoring and management of computer systems.”
Analysts said at the time that the patent could make Expand Beyond an attractive acquisition target. In the statement Tuesday, Semotus described the patent as “the most comprehensive and far-reaching” in the mobile business software industry. It did not say whether or how it planned to enforce it and representatives were not available to comment.
Semotus also did not say whether it would continue to develop Expand Beyond’s products, although it did say they would be complementary to its own.
Ari Kaplan, Expand Beyond’s president, has become president of Semotus’ Expand Beyond subsidiary, the companies said.
