Specialix International Ltd, the UK serial input-output company from Byfleet, Surrey, has been acquired by Canadian network and host access company Perle Systems Inc of Toronto. Specialix had been struggling to find a new business as its traditional I/O marketplace faded, and last year was forced to regroup back to the UK after an attempt to crack the US market (CI No 3,274). The company’s revenues for 1998 were around $20m. Perle, which didn’t reveal the terms of the acquisition, said that the company’s focus on connected remote users to central servers was a good fit with Specialix’s host and network connectivity products. Specialix was founded in 1986 and built up its business connecting dumb terminals up to Unix and PC servers. Perle also acquired the Affinity Systems 5250 emulation product line from Development Concepts Inc, for which it will take a $4m charge in its second quarter. DCI supplies emulation board products to IBM Corp AS/400 users.
