Avocent Acquires Sonic Mobility

Avocent paid $8 million in cash, plus assumed debt and certain transaction costs of privately-held company based in Calgary, Canada.

Avocent said the deal adds a suite of software products to its portfolio, including products for secure wireless systems administration and mobile device management on multiple platforms, such as BlackBerry, Pocket PC and Palm.

Sonic's sonicadmin software, which Microsoft has licensed as the heart of its Windows 2003 Mobile Admin Pack, uses a real-time model to perform many routine server administrative functions from a mobile device. For example, VARs can reboot a server, unlock/change passwords, restart services not functioning properly, view event logs, move files and send messages to logged-in users.

Sonic Mobility CEO Derek Ball will join Avocent and will become Avocent's director of business development for mobile solutions. He will be joined by Dayton Foster, Sonic Mobility's vice president of engineering, as well as the software development team.

In connection with the acquisition, 10 people who became non-executive officer employees of Avocent following the deal will get a total of 40,000 stock option grants from Avocent.

The acquisition is not expected to effect Avocent's third-quarter results, but the company does plan to post a charge for acquired in-process research and development during the period.

Shares of Avocent closed Wednesday up 44 cents or 2 percent to $28.95.

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