German vendor of data center automation software, Beta Systems Software AG has acquired Harbor Systems Management Ltd, a Canadian developer of storage management systems, for $19.67m. The Calgary-based company will now be renamed Beta Systems of Canada Ltd. A spokesperson for Berlin-based Beta said the rationale behind the acquisition was the extension of the German company’s primarily mainframe-oriented product offering onto other platforms, particularly Unix and NT. Similar motives were behind last month’s distribution agreement with another Canadian firm from Calgary, QMaster Software Solutions, which specializes in document management systems. Beta, which floated on Frankfurt’s Neuer Markt in 1997, had been planning to buy QMaster too, but slower-than-expected revenue growth, together with an inability to reach satisfactory terms, forced a rethink late last year (CI No 3,537). Also last month, Beta closed a deal with a German company, Munich-based Norcom Informationstechnologie und Unternehmensberatung GmbH, enabling it to distribute the latter’s Distributed Application Platform client/server security software. A Beta official said the company’s acquisition strategy was to extend its market reach in its four strategic areas, namely process management, document management, enterprise management and storage management.
