Antenna Software buys Vaultus Mobile Technology

Network World, Antenna Software, which offers products and services for building, rolling out and managing mobile applications, last week announced its acquisition of Boston-based company with expertise in financial and Microsoft SharePoint applications.
Terms of the buyout of Vaultus Mobile Technologies, a 10-year-old company with roots at MIT, were not disclosed. Antenna has about 225 employees and Vaultus adds fewer than 50 people to that number.
The deal will enable Antenna to expand beyond its expertise in business-to-business-to-employee mobile apps to business-to-business-to-customer apps, says Jim Hemmer, Antenna's CEO (the extra "business" in those terms refers to Antenna supplying technology to businesses, which in term provide apps to employees or customers).
Among those apps are programs targeted at financial services companies' customers, including those focused on mobile commerce.
"Mobile commerce is the next significant wave of our technology expansion and I think, the market's expansion," Hemmer says. "There's this affinity people have with their smartphone that's a new phenomenon."
Vaultus also brings Antenna technology for business intelligence applications, such as those used for management dashboards and that can tap into software from companies like Cognos or SAP/Business Objects. In addition, Vaultus offers what Hemmer describes as a strong application for mobile access to Microsoft SharePoint.
"SharePoint has huge penetration in the market right now, though I would suggest there's an opportunity to improve the user experience," he says. "With me I can never find the things I want, so if you can make it easier to find the stuff I think that will make it more impactful."
Unlike with Antenna's acquisition last year of fellow mobile middleware vendor Dexterra, which involved melding the companies and their platforms, Antenna is not planning to integrate the Vaultus technology with its own in the short term, says Jim Somers, chief marketing and strategy officer at Antenna. Vaultus will operate as a subsidiary and take advantage of channel and other opportunities to work with Antenna, he says.