ICM acquires Office Shadow

£700,000 acquisition adds business continuity software to the ICM portfolio.

Phoenix IT Group plc has announced the acquisition of the UK business and ‘certain assets’ of Office Shadow Limited, from Office Shadow Limited and Moore Stephens LLP (the Administrators of Office Shadow Limited).

The acquisition is being made by ICM Business Continuity Services Limited (ICM), Phoenix’s specialist Business Continuity division. It adds business continuity planning software, including business impact analysis, risk management and compliance capabilities, to ICM’s existing IT and workarea services portfolio. The cash consideration payable amounts to £447,000 for the business and assets with a further £250,000 payable to a third party software developer, EPAM, for the completion of an updated version of the main software suite, due for delivery in Q2 2010.

Office Shadow is a well known and award winning provider of hosted/on-line business continuity planning tools, delivered through their hosted Shadow Planner software. The software suite, currently used by over 100 blue chip and public sector customers, enables organizations to amalgamate and manage multiple information sources, from multiple departments, across multiple locations into one useable and maintainable business continuity plan. The UK business is based in Reigate, Surrey and employs 24 staff, including an offshore testing and development team based in Lahore, Pakistan.

Continuity Central spoke exclusively to Mike Osborne, ICM’s managing director, who commented:

“We are really pleased with being able to move quickly to secure the future of Office Shadow and Shadow Planner. It’s a well known business continuity industry brand, it’s a great product and the people there are fantastic. We have also secured the development of the next generation of the software which is already in beta testing and will be complete in Q2 2010. Of course with ICM being a well known business continuity service provider, the addition of a market leading business continuity planning tool also adds significant strength to an already attractive portfolio of IT, data and workarea recovery.

"There is more news to come from ICM in 2010 with some great products and service enhancements in the pipeline for emergency office, data replication and on-line back-up, so it’s been a really exciting time for us and a great way to exit 2009 given the difficult economic climate.”

www.icm-continuity.co.uk

Related story:

Changes ahead for Office-Shadow
4th December: Office-Shadow expects to make an acquisition announcement in the next few days.
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•Date: 24th Dec 2009• Region: UK •Type: Article •Topic: BC markets
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