Jack Henry Acquires Gladiator Technology

Published: July 30, 2007

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

There are a number of bright spots in the i5/OS and OS/400 ecosystem, and Jack Henry & Associates, the provider of financial services software and hardware, is one of them. The company is growing, profitable, publicly traded, and making acquisitions. Specifically, Jack Henry has acquired Gladiator Technology Services, a provider of security services specifically tailored to banks and other financial institutions.

Jack Henry is located in Monett, Missouri, and was founded in 1976, when most companies did not yet have computers but financial institutions were buying up mainframes like crazy to automate operations that were people-intensive up until that time. In 1985, Jack Henry went public, and today, even after a few dismal days on Wall Street, Jack Henry has a market capitalization of $2.3 billion. In fiscal 2006 (ended June 30 last year), the company had $592.2 million in sales, up 10.5 percent. The reason why Jack Henry commands such a high market cap is because it is profitable--consistently. It is also a software vendor that likes the System i platform. The company has over 3,300 employees, and adding Gladiator Technology to its mix of offerings seems natural enough. Now Jack Henry can count the money and help keep it safe.

Gladiator Technology is located in Atlanta, Georgia and has over 500 banks and credit unions using its products. These include network intrusion prevention, firewalls, server intrusion prevention and event logging, risk assessments, compliance and regulatory solutions, and e-mail filtering and encryption services. Many of the customers using Gladiator Technology's services are also using Jack Henry's banking software, and Jack Prim, Jack Henry's chief executive officer, says that Gladiator Technology was acquired specifically to cross-sell security products and services to its 2,400 core banking and credit union clients.

The financial details of this acquisition were not made public, but Kevin Williams, Jack Henry's chief financial officer, said that the acquisition would be accretive to earnings per share in fiscal 2008. Gladiator Technology is the 16th acquisition that Jack Henry has made as it diversifies out beyond core banking software and hardware. Gladiator Technology will be merged into Jack Henry's ProfitStars division, which is division that specializes in risk mitigation, cost control, and network design for financial institutions.

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