Thoma Cressey Bravo Puts Another Iron in the Fire

Published: August 6, 2007

by Dan Burger

Thoma Cressey Bravo, the private equity firm that we've become familiar with since its acquisition of System i high availability vendors Vision Solutions, iTera, and Lakeview Technology, has acquired a majority stake in the enterprise content management (ECM) software firm, Hyland Software. TCB also has an equity investment in Sirius Computer Solutions, a large System i reseller.

Hyland's claim to fame is an ECM product called OnBase, which integrates with the majority of current server platforms. It has been designed for dedicated integration with products from tier-one application providers, such as suites from Lawson Software, SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft, but the company emphasizes its capability to integrate OnBase with niche solutions and homegrown applications as well.

The company has developed Web services with capabilities that include processing requests for documents to be stored or retrieved and processing workflow execution requests. It offers software development kits for both .NET and Java. The application programming interfaces (APIs) in OnBase were designed for complex integrations with legacy applications and to enable remote or local applications to interact with its content repository and workflow using standard COM, DCOM, HTTP, and SOAP protocols.

"Hyland Software's leadership in a highly attractive industry segment, coupled with the company's exceptional management team, makes this an exciting investment opportunity for us," said Orlando Bravo, one of the managing partners at Thoma Cressey Bravo. "We will work with Hyland Software to build the leading independent ECM software vendor through both continued organic growth and consolidation."

Thoma Cressey has indicated its interest in additional acquisitions that would benefit the growth of Hyland Software. The firm is one of the more active private equity firms in the software industry. Its purchasing power goes far beyond the System i ecosystem. During the past five years, the firm has closed more than 30 software acquisitions with an aggregate value of $3 billion. The private equity firm's current portfolio of software companies has revenues of approximately $2 billion and earnings of $500 million.

RELATED STORIES

Vision Solutions Acquires HA Rival Lakeview Technology

Thoma Cressey Strikes Again: Buys iTera to Merge with Vision Solutions

Venture Capitalist Thoma Cressey Acquires Vision Solutions

Sirius Gets Equity Investment from Thoma Cressey

                     Post this story to del.icio.us
               Post this story to Digg
    Post this story to Slashdot