Bruised Iona bought by US firm

Trade

Pictured: Iona’s CEO Peter Zotto

Irish distributed SOA infrastructure specialist Iona Technologies has been acquired by Progress Software Corporation in a $106 million. The cash deal values Iona shares at $4.05 (about €2.60). Progress is a global supplier of application infrastructure software used to develop, deploy, integrate and manage business applications.

Iona will become an indirect wholly owned subsidiary of Progress on completion of the deal in September if approved by regulators in the US, as well as by Iona shareholders and the Irish High Court. The Iona board has unanimously approved the deal.

Iona lost over $5 million in this year’s first quarter, resulting in job losses and other cost-cutting measures. Redundancy payments are likely to keep the firm in the red for the immediate future, say industry observers.

For Massachusetts-based Progress, the deal means a marriage of its own SOA portfolio with Iona’s Artix, Cobra and Fuse products.

Iona CEO Peter Zotto said the firms’ combined talents created “the industry choice” for truly independent, heterogeneous Service Oriented Architecture infrastructure.

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