History 2004: Front Porch Digital (FPD) + ManagedStorage International (MSI) = Incentra Solutions

Front Porch Digital (FPD) completed what it had officially described as the acquisition of ManagedStorage International (MSI) and has changed its name to Incentra Solutions.

FPO, involved in media conversion software, obtained storage service provider MSI for $39 million in stock.

It will come as no surprise that Tom Sweeney, who has served as both chairman of FPD and CEO of MSI, was named the chairman and CEO of lncentra.

The combined 2 companies emerged from StorageTek’s orbit, and so nothing prevented them from joining forces, except that it’s not entirely clear what they have in common, apart perhaps, from the possibility of selling MSI services and software to the broadcast companies on FDP’s customer roster.

MSI was created in 2000 as a spinoff of StorageTek. That same year FPD was founded, later acquiring the assets of StorageTek’s media services operations, located in Houston, TX, although it dropped that activity the following year. In 2002, FPD acquired MSI’s DIVArchive software and solutions division located in Toulouse, France in exchange for common stock, and since has focused only on software sales for DIVArchive and BitScream, the latter of which is used to transcode video formats between video server components used throughout the broadcast industry.

Recall too that in 2003, ManagedStorage acquired for $6 million all the assets relating to Datavault storage services business of SSP Sanrise.

Incentra will be headquartered in Boulder, CO and will maintain offices in Broomfield, CO, MSI’s former HQ, as well as in Mt. Laurel, NJ, San Ramon, CA, Toulouse and London, UK. Two divisions have been created, one that corresponds to FPD’s business, which will be headed up by former FPD president Michael Knaisch, the 2nd regrouping MSI’s, with Sweeney in charge.

The acquisition should allow publicly-traded Incentra, with roughly 90 employees, to earn nearly double the revenues of FPD, according to Sweeney. FPD had sales of $2 million for the 2Q04, but has never turned a profit since its inception.

This article is an abstract of news published on issue 200 on September 2004 from the former paper version of Computer Data  Storage Newsletter.