Infowave brings client-side capabilities in-house, increasing value proposition

The acquisition of HiddenMind Technology LLC will help Vancouver-based Infowave Software Inc. respond to market demand for customer-side application development and support as part of a broader wireless product offering, says one of the company’s senior executives. The wireless data application development firm announced the acquisition of Cary NC-based HiddenMind late last month (RoW Update, June 16/03). Bringing client-side application development in-house is a big plus for the company, Infowave’s executive VP of sales and marketing Bill Tam tells Report on Wireless. The company can now offer greater application support on the device side of the equation, he explains, adding that HiddenMind also brings BlackBerry support to the table. "We can take (enterprises) all the way from an initial consulting and modeling stage all the way through to an application deployment stage," Tam says. The acquisition will not only give Infowave greater application development expertise, it will also help the company attack the market by offering a more complete development package, he says. Tam talked about the challenges of deploying wireless data applications within enterprises last month at the Wireless Connections 2003 conference in Calgary where he noted that finding an executive "sponsor" outside the IT department was key (RoW, June 11/03). "This helps our proposition when we talk to those types of people by saying we can actually take them through a process that models their work flow and presents a wireless solution that supports it," Tam explains in an interview with RoW earlier this month. Increasing need to offer complete package Tam says enterprises are increasingly looking to wireless data application providers for a turnkey solution. "The HiddenMind acquisition gives us the tools to do that. What they have is a mobility application platform that allows IT departments or professional services organizations like system integrators to build applications on their behalf that hook into the existing enterprise applications that they may be operating," Tam says. "And the way the HiddenMind technology will inter-work with ours is that it essentially enhances the backend capabilities that we’ve already put in place. But now we’ve got some added business intelligence on top of that with the HiddenMind pieces that can actually do more with the data and provide more application layer capabilities to our solution." While Infowave is shoring up expanded application development capabilities, the company is also securing further financing. On the same day it announced the proposed acquisition of HiddenMind, the company entered into a private placement agreement valued at US$3 million with Jerry Trooien, controlling shareholder of HiddenMind. Trooien will gain nearly 30 million units when the private placement closes, each unit giving him the right to one common share and one half of a purchase warrant. Each full warrant can be converted into a common share for $0.19. HiddenMind and Trooien will hold about 40% of the approximately 111 million Infowave common shares issued and outstanding. Both have agreed to not take control of Infowave for at least two years. Additionally, Infowave entered into a private placement agreement with Canaccord Capital Corp. and Pacific International Securities Inc. for an aggregate total of US$4 million. Proceeds from this transaction will be used for general capital purposes, sales and marketing, and product development.

Infowave brings client-side capabilities in-house, increasing value proposition

News | June 23, 2003

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