Big changes are afoot at the company where I work (and hold the longest title) in
the coming year. One of them is an agreement with Critical Path, which
we announced minutes ago. I’ll let the press release do the talking…
TORONTO, CANADA (December 14, 2005) – Tucows Inc. (AMEX:TCX, TSX:TC) today
announced that it has signed a definitive agreement with Critical Path,
Inc. to acquire substantially all of Critical Path’s hosted messaging
assets, including the customer base, hosted messaging communications
infrastructure, and other related assets, such as goodwill and a
software license for Memova™ Messaging, for up to US $8.0 million in
cash plus the assumption of some related contractual liabilities.
Tucows will maintain the hosted messaging data centers in Denver,
Colorado and London, England. Tucows will also offer employment to the
majority of Critical Path’s hosted messaging operations and support
teams located in Toronto, Ontario.
“With this acquisition, Tucows becomes a leader in hosted
email, especially hosted email for Internet service providers and web
hosting companies,” said Elliot Noss, President and CEO, Tucows Inc.
“It is consistent with our strategy to be a leading provider of
Internet services to service providers. It will deepen our
relationships with existing customers, add a number of new service
provider customers and further diversify our revenue streams.”
“We believe our plan will result in a seamless transition for our new
customers” said David Woroch, Vice President of Sales & Marketing,
Tucows Inc. “We intend to grow the hosted email business by providing a
greater customer experience through our focus on the needs of our
service provider customers and leveraging the features of the Memova
Messaging software.”
“We are excited about the relationship with Tucows,” said Mark
Ferrer, CEO and Chairman, Critical Path. “It gives Critical Path the
ability to continue to offer multiple delivery options for our
software, while allowing us to focus on our core strength – software
development.”
The acquisition will be accounted for as a purchase transaction and has
been approved by both companies’ boards of directors. The acquisition
is anticipated to close January 3, 2006, and is subject to standard
closing provisions and conditions.
From
my point of view as the developer relations guy, this is exciting —
not only does this bode well for the company, but there’s also Critical
Path’s email infrastructure and technology that I’ll get to look at,
document and promote. You can’t give a techie a better Christmas
present than new tech (and new techies to hang out with, too).
If
you’d like to know more, check out the Hosted Email FAQ on the Tucows site, which includes the answers to questions such as:
- Who is Critical Path?
- Why is Tucows buying Critical Path’s Hosted Messaging Business?
- Why is Critical Path selling its Hosted Messaging business?
- Why did Tucows select Critical Path’s messaging software?
- What are the financial implications of the transaction for Tucows?
- How will Critical Path staff be affected?
Here’s our CEO, Elliot Noss (on the balcony), making the announcement to
the Tucows staff. Note the space: we can easily accomodate a few extra
dozen coworkers.
If you’d like something a little more up-close-and-personal, you can hear CEO Elliot Noss talk about it himself in
(it’ll first take you to a disclaimer page — read and understand the
disclaimer and then click the “I read and understood it” button, after
which you’ll be taken to a page with the podcast). In the podcast, he
answers these questions:
- Why is Tucows acquiring Critical Path?
- What are the financial implications of this transaction?
- Tell us more about the email and broader messaging space.
- Was this a good deal for Tucows?
- Why did you choose to do this as a podcast?
You get three guesses as to whom the very smooth and professional-sounding interviewer in the podcast is.
