Tyler Technologies: SaaS Is Coming To A Government Near You

Tyler Technologies said small governments are embracing the cloud at a more rapid pace, which puts the public-focused solution provider in a good position to capture that market as municipalities look to transition to a software as a service model.

’If we could design the migration from a timing stand point, this has been a really good one,’ said John Marr Jr., Tyler’s board chairman, during an earnings call on Friday. ’We had a pretty good reception 10 years ago, 12 years ago when we launched this. It's slowly and incrementally built... seeing this continue to slowly grow, has really worked well for our model and that’s what we see going forward.’

During the call, Tyler Technologies said it recorded its 27th consecutive quarter of double-digit growth. The Plano, Tx.-based solutions provider – No. 43 on the CRN Solution Provider 500 – posted second-quarter revenue of $236.1 million, up 13.1 percent from $208.8 million rom the same period a year ago. Tyler reported a 23.3 percent growth in net income with $39.2 million compared to $31.8 million, in the year ago quarter.

Tyler CEO H. Lynn Moore attributed much of the growth to sales from both subscriptions and software licenses that he said were robust, growing 31 percent and 16 percent, respectively. The company acquired data analytcs firm Socrata, as well as Maine-based Sage Data Security last quarter, to strengthen is offerings in both of those areas.

Tyler’s public safety division also had a solid quarter, Moore said. The firm sold the company’s New World Public Safety solutions – including a computer aided dispatch, records management system, and mobile systems -- to Summit County, Ohio to handle the consolidation of 44 law enforcement agencies, 12 fire departments, and six dispatch centers. Tyler sold its Eagle Recorder product to San Bernadino County Calif., each valued at $3.3 million. The company also inked million-dollar deals with the Wyoming Highway Patrol, and Elk County, Pennsylvania.

Tyler signed new multi-suite SaaS deals with Walton County in Florida and the city of Weston, Fla., as well as Glenwood Springs, Colo., Ontario County, N.Y., Glynn County, Ga., for its financial software, Munis. The cities of Atlanta, and Coral Gables, Fla. bought the company’s EnerGov software for community development and infrastructure.

Socrata Connected Government Cloud, which uses artificial intelligence to search massive data sets in order to solve problems in government, signed five year contracts with the State of Texas Department of Information Resources, and Pinellas County, Fla. The California Office of Emergency Services also signed a deal with Socrata.

Tyler Technologies provides end-to-end software solutions to 15,000 government clients including schools, police and fire, courts, as well as county, and municipal administrations. As many technology workers age out of the workforce, Tyler said the cost of replacing them for an increasingly complex workload – in addition to the evolving threat posed by hackers -- is pushing government agencies into SaaS.

’The local government market is slower to embrace these changes, so for years our migration was slower than the commercial market you might follow, the comfort level with this has grown,’ Marr said. ’The awareness of it has grown and they’re just embracing it.’