Navidec Inc plans to merge with VSI Holdings Inc to create an internet and new media company. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. The proposed merger is slightly unusual in that the partners come from quite different backgrounds. Englewood, Colorado-based Navidec offers everything from commercial web site development to intranet and extranet applications and tools, while VSI Holdings says it supplies business services for marketing, education and entertainment from its base in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. The companies explain that when they merge they will pool four areas of competency: plain vanilla internet services, transaction-enabled ecommerce, the deployment of new media on behalf of marketing and other general technology integration. Sounds like the baby’s Navidec genes will dominate its VSIH parentage, and Navidec CEO Ralph Armijo confirms: A holding company is not the direction we are going. The main selling point of the merged organization will lie in the fact that it is one organization and not the four or five organizations that customers would otherwise have to hire to do the same job. If you look at what we do today, it is easy to identify specific competitors for both companies, said Armijo. But there isn’t any one company that can do all the things we will do. For example Navidec could co-ordinate all technology needs for the planned Wonderful World of Oz theme park, from tracking individual visitors based on their purchases and rides to maintaining the theme park’s web site. The only competitors equipped to tackle a job like that are giant systems integrators like EDS.
