Knova Acquired by M2M Holdings, Purchaser of Onyx

By Tracey E. Schelmetic

Editorial Director,
Customer Inter@ction Solutions magazine

 

Proving to be an increasingly determined player in the call center space, private equity company M2M Holdings Inc., which is jointly owned by Battery Ventures VI L.P. and Thoma Cressey Equity Partners, today announced it will acquire KNOVA Software Inc., a provider of intelligent customer experience applications. The transaction is valued at $5.00 per share, or approximately $47 million.

The parties anticipate closing the transaction in the first calendar quarter of 2007. The closing is subject to approval by holders of a majority of KNOVA Software’s outstanding common stock and other customary regulatory and documentation closing conditions.

M2M Holdings has stated that, as with each of its past acquisitions, including that of Onyx earlier this year, the company will apply its “proven integration model to the acquisition of KNOVA Software. This model ensures that each acquired product line maintains its brand identity and is enhanced, maintained, supported and sold by dedicated sales, product management, development, customer support, and professional services teams.”



“The most immediate and obvious advantage of this acquisition is a broadened, more powerful customer management offering based on the individual strengths of the KNOVA and Onyx applications,” said Jeff Tognoni, CEO of M2M Holdings. “Leveraging Onyx’s leading Service-Oriented Architecture and KNOVA’s existing application programming interfaces for customer relationship management integration, the two products can be quickly integrated with one another using Web services. In a short period of time, Onyx customers will be able to seamlessly enhance their application with sophisticated tools for the contact center, as well as with powerful Web-based self-service.”

KNOVA Software President and CEO Bruce Armstrong said, “This acquisition is a win-win scenario for both companies, and we see it as the ideal opportunity to carry KNOVA Software to the next level for customers, partners and employees. With the economies of scale across multiple CRM-focused product lines, and the flexibility that comes from being privately held, we will be in a position to accelerate adoption of our service resolution management solutions.”

For more information about Knova, visit www.knova.com.