Red Hat Inc has agreed to acquire FeedHenry in Waterford for approximately €63.5 million in cash, with chief executive Cathal McGloin set to gross over €5 million.
Red Hat, listed on the New York Stock Exchange, is the world's leading provider of open source solutions. FeedHenry is a leading enterprise mobile application platform provider.
FeedHenry, led by Cathal McGloin, expands Red Hat's portfolio of application development, integration, and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) solutions, enabling Red Hat to support mobile application development in public and private environments.
Based on Companies Office filings, it is estimated that Cathal McGloin will gross around €5,340,000 from the sale of FeedHenry to Red Hat, subject to closing adjustments.
According to Red Hat, enterprises continue to embrace mobile devices as the preferred way to engage and interact with customers, employees, and partners, and new enterprise application software development is increasingly focused on supporting mobile apps and devices.
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Industry analyst DC expects 1.2 billion smart phones to ship in 2014, representing 19% growth over 2013. W
With this significant shift, Red Hat believes that mobile application platforms have become a critical requirement for efficient development and deployment of backend services for enterprise mobile applications.
Mobile application platforms such as FeedHenry enable enterprises to support enterprise mobile applications at scale, with centralized security, notification and integration services.
Aligned with Red Hat's open hybrid cloud strategy, FeedHenry enables enterprises to accelerate their mobile app development and backend integration via private clouds, public clouds, and on-premises.
The FeedHenry platform offers developers the flexibility to create native (Android, iOS, Windows Phone and Blackberry), hybrid, HTML5 or web apps.
FeedHenry secured investment of €500,000 from Enterprise Ireland in August 2012 after sourcing €300,000 from the state agency in November 2011.
Besides EI, other investors include Signature Capital , which invested in November 2011 and subsequently; the Bank of Ireland Seed Fund, managed by Kernel Capital; a Kernel Capital Partners private equity fund; Intel Capital Corporation and VMware Inc, which has a shareholding of 6.9%. Total equity invested in the company was €7.2 million.
FeedHenry was founded in 2010 as a spin out from the Telecommunications Software and Systems Group at the Waterford Institute of Technology. The college has a 3.4% shareholding worth €1.8 million at the exit consideration.
FeedHenry customers include Aer Lingus, Baystate Health, and O2 UK and Ireland. The company has offices in Waterford and Dublin, Staines in England and Burlington in Massachussetts.
