Tyler Technologies Continues Channel M&A Madness With Acquisition of Sage Data Security

Tyler Technologies continued its buying spree with the purchase of Sage Data Security boosting the cyber-defense capabilities it offers to 15,000 clients in state and local government.

The terms of the purchase were not disclosed. Tyler, No. 44 on the CRN SP500, said it financed the deal with existing capital.

[Related: Tyler Technologies Acquires Environmental Health Software Provider To Boost Government Sales]

The acquisition of Sage, which has 45 employees and is based in Portland, Maine, is Tyler's second acquisition this month, and seventh acquisition in three years.

Tyler shares were down 82 cents to $218.10 in mid-morning trading on Tuesday."Sage offers a suite of services that supports an entire cybersecurity lifecycle, including program development, education and training, threat detection, technology testing, advisory services, and digital forensics," Tyler Technologies said in a prepared statement.

Sage, which has 240 customers, has three primary practices: advisory services aimed at helping clients develop risk assurance policies and consulting with clients when a data breach has occurred; the ethical hacking business which simulates attacks on client infrastructure to probe for vulnerabilities, and threat detection, in which experts review daily logs to scan for threats in the network.

"The acquisition of Sage enables Tyler to be as proactive as possible in offering data security expertise and services, as risks to data are becoming more prevalent across all industries, including the public sector," said Lynn Moore, president of Tyler, in a prepared statement."With the addition of Sage and its core product for managed threat detection, nDiscovery, Tyler clients will have the opportunity to add an additional layer of security in a cost-effective way. We look forward to bringing even more security to our clients through this complementary offering."

The Sage business will become part of Tyler's ERP & School Division, but will continue to be based at its current office in Portland, Maine.

"We are very excited at the opportunity to join Tyler Technologies. Our mission has been to protect the nation's critical digital infrastructure. Until now, we have focused primarily on financial and healthcare verticals. Becoming part of Tyler allows Sage the opportunity to offer our expertise more broadly to the public sector," said Rick Simonds, president of Sage in a prepared statement.

Tyler also announced that it has closed the previously announced acquisition of Socrata Inc., a Seattle-based venture-backed digital government solution provider, for a price tag of $150 million. That acquisition price is subject to net working capital and net debt adjustments and will be funded through Tyler's existing cash balances.

With the Socrata acquisition, Tyler clients in every public sector vertical, including justice, public safety, ERP/financial, and community development, will have the opportunity to make their data discoverable, usable and actionable.

In addition, the Socrata deal opens the door for data from other jurisdictions to make analytics even more powerful and meaningful for government clients.

Tyler bought North Carolina environmental compliance software company DHD in August. Prior to that it had purchased $10 million solution provider Brazos Technology Corp., scheduling software provider ExecuTime and public safety software specialist New World Systems, the latter for $670 million.