UPDATED: SCO splashes out on Web services acquisition

By Matt Whipp

Posted on 22 Jul 2003 at 17:37

SCO is taking advantage of its increased share value to buy Vultus, whose software rosta it will add to its SCOx Web services platform.

During the last results announcement, SCO CEO Darl McBride said that the company would be looking to 'make some strategic acquisitions' of companies in the region of $4 to $10m that would provide a 'technology fill-in' for its SCOx Web services platform.

This looks to be the first, with a 'mostly stock' deal not to exceed $2.7mn. SCO will also stand some $200,000 of Vultus debt.

More precise financial details of the deal have not yet been disclosed, but SCO is taking advantage of its swelling stock value, riding high on a profitable last quarter and its potential to bring in increasing IP revenues. Its stock has leapt up the Nasdaq from a little over a dollar in February to more than $13 yesterday.

has bought the complete assets of Vultus Inc - including engineering personnel and technology, of which the WebFace Solution Suite is the main coup.

The WebFace Solution Suite is a development environment for creating and implementing applications that can be accessed through a standard browser interface, without requiring any installed plug-ins or Java. The Suite also includes tools to ease transferring existing applications to the Internet, regardless of platform or other back-end technologies.

'This step is strategic in bringing together a Web Services framework that SCO can provide to our customers,' said Jeff Hunsaker, Senior VP of Marketing at SCO. 'SCO is targeting web services as a platform for growth.'

The first applications for the SCOx environment will be unveiled at the SCO Forum in Las Vegas this August. The company hopes to penetrate between 15 to 20 per cent of the Web services market that it values at $3.7bn.