Megabuyte - Technology sector intelligence

Provider of software and services to the local authority market Idox has announced a strategically significant acquisition this morning which takes it outside of the public sector market in a meaningful way for the first time. Idox is to acquire McLaren Software Group for £1.0m in cash and £1.3m of net liabilities. Based in Glasgow and with offices in Germany and Houston, Texas, McLaren provides document management and control applications to the oil & gas, mining, utilities, pharmaceutical and transportation sectors. For the year to December 2009, McLaren achieved underlying operating profit of £0.4m on revenues of £6.4m. Read our first thoughts on the deal in Newswire Plus.

2ergo exits year of transition, but still has a bit to do

Mobile content and service provider 2ergo has reaffirmed its positive outlook (Premium Plus readers see here) in its FY10 full year results. This last year of transition (to August) resulted in revenues falling 6% to £21.4m, EBITDA falling 73% to £1.37m and the company’s legendary cash pile falling another £5m to just £1.5m after heavy capex. However, a better second half lends support to the company’s positive outlook, though the company has a long way to go to justify the burning of so much cash.

Promise in Promote for Autonomy

We have reported in recent weeks that, having been bullish about the prospects for its marketing analytics offering entitled Promote, Autonomy had been rather quiet on the subject the last couple of times it has updated the market on trading. So, it was with interest that we noted a rather large contract win for Promote announced by Autonomy yesterday. The agreement to provide Promote with a leading media company is worth a very healthy $13m to Autonomy. Now, how much of this is simply rebadged Interwoven technology and how much of it is genuine next generation marketing analytics is not clear from the statement but, either way, this is certainly welcome news for Autonomy as it attempts to get top line growth going again after a rather flat period.

Pickering to leave Charteris

Struggling IT consulting group Charteris has announced this morning that its founder and CEO David Pickering is to leave the company. Chairman Cliff Preddy will move to Executive Chairman during the handover to a new CEO who is now being sought from both internal and external candidates. The statement also confirms that trading remains in line expectations. Premium subscribers can read our thoughts in the departure in Newswire Plus.