NewsGator Acquires Tomoye to Meet Growing Enterprise Social Computing Demand

DENVER, Jan. 20 /PRNewswire/ -- NewsGator (www.newsgator.com) today announced that it had reached a final agreement for the acquisition of Tomoye (www.tomoye.com), a long-time innovator in enterprise social computing, creating a single source for intranet, extranet and Internet social computing solutions built on Microsoft technologies.

The combined entity delivers Enterprise 2.0's most comprehensive product solution, the largest and most experienced R&D team, and the deepest integration with Microsoft SharePoint – the most popular business collaboration tool with more than 100 million seats.

NewsGator now has more than 2.1 million paid enterprise social computing users overall – more than any other social computing vendor. NewsGator also has the largest implementations in private-sector enterprise social computing. Via Tomoye, NewsGator adds the largest market share in Government 2.0, supporting many substantial installations, including the single largest government social computing community, the United States Army with 150,000 users.

"This strategic move expands our market reach and gives us a broader portfolio of solutions for current and future customers," said J.B. Holston, NewsGator CEO. "Tomoye has an excellent product, deep experience in the government sector, and a complementary vision that is focused on delighting the largest organizations in the world. This transaction immediately follows a 2009 in which NewsGator performed well beyond all of our targets. With the world of work evolving so rapidly, the Tomoye acquisition, combined with our phenomenal momentum through 2009, positions NewsGator as the trusted Enterprise 2.0 partner for the world's most significant organizations."

Although terms of the deal were not disclosed, Tomoye customers will continue to receive full product support from the combined company. Tomoye customers include the Federal Reserve Bank, The United States Army, Defense Acquisition University, The United States Air Force, Jacobs Engineering, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, U.S. Agency for International Development and more.

"Our sale to NewsGator is the right move for our customers since our combined R&D team will rapidly build out our vision for social computing," said Tomoye CEO and co-founder Eric Sauve. "We can now more quickly react to advances in the industry, enabling our customers to reap the benefits of social computing that much sooner." Sauve will remain responsible for Tomoye's Ecco software and will be a senior member of the NewsGator management team. Tomoye has pioneered enterprise social computing, communities of practice, and cross-enterprise learning and collaboration since its inception in 2000, and has a strong base of loyal customers, particularly in the government sector. Like NewsGator Social Sites, Tomoye's Ecco social computing software enhances Microsoft SharePoint by adding a wide range of capabilities, including social media, social networking and communities. Ecco also provides an extremely rich feature set running in a standalone mode.

The acquisition enriches NewsGator's already broad support of SharePoint to encompass the Microsoft .NET Framework, Microsoft Windows SharePoint Server (WSS), Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010. This combination of product offerings covers every conceivable customer scenario from a quickly deployed standalone platform to a well-integrated SharePoint WSS solution to a deeply customized MOSS 2007 deployment; and from intranet collaboration and expertise discovery to extranet customer and partner interactions to Internet communities for customers. NewsGator is a depth-managed Certified Gold partner of Microsoft, and Tomoye is a Certified Gold Partner.

Forrester Research has predicted Enterprise 2.0 will become a $4.6 billion industry by 2013 and that social networking tools will garner the bulk of that sum.

For more information on the acquisition, see our blog post http://blogs.newsgator.com/daily.

About NewsGator Technologies, Inc.

NewsGator Technologies helps enterprises leverage social computing to deliver real business value. The company's enterprise social networking products are used by the world's most recognized brands, including Novartis, Biogen Idec, Edelman, Federal Reserve Bank, The United States Army, and The United States Air Force. NewsGator Social Sites and Tomoye Ecco give organizations better ways to innovate, collaborate, manage knowledge, develop new employees and improve productivity. For more information, visit www.newsgator.com.

SOURCE NewsGator Technologies, Inc.