US engineering company Emerson Electric said that it has agreed to acquire network equipment technology provider Avocent, in a transaction that will strengthen its ability to deliver total infrastructure management to its data centre customers around the world.
The Avocent Board has unanimously endorsed the terms of an all-cash tender offer of $25 per share, or approximately $1.2 billion. The purchase is expected to close around in January 2010, pending customary regulatory approvals and acceptance of the offer by Avocent stockholders holding a majority of Avocent shares.
David Farr, chairman, CEO and president of Emerson, said: “Combining Avocent’s technologies, relationships and installed base with Emerson’s power and cooling presence allows us to offer a more compelling solution to our data centre customers’ most pressing challenge – energy efficiency.
“It furthers our customers’ ability to better manage reliability, availability and lifecycle costs through a simple yet comprehensive view of the complete data center physical infrastructure.”
Avocent’s unified platform blends hardware, software and embedded technologies for monitoring, managing and problem solving in data centres. Its IT infrastructure management technology manages IT device operating and performance information.In 2008, Avocent recorded sales of $657m. With global manufacturing, research and development and sales operations, nearly 50% of its 2008 revenues came from outside the US.
The companies said that the Avocent’s configuration and monitoring technologies complement Emerson Network Power’s power systems, energy management and precision cooling solutions. Emerson’s data centre-related revenues were approximately $2.6 billion in fiscal 2008.
Mike Borman, CEO of Avocent, said: “Augmenting Avocent’s ability to access and control the physical aspects of network devices and servers with information and knowledge of the broader power and cooling infrastructure forms a powerful combination missing today from the toolset available to data centre managers.”
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