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Kas Thomas

DAM vendor Ancept under new ownership

6-Mar-2009

Tags: Digital and Media Asset Management, Selecting Technology, Vendor Viability & Financials,

Minnesota-based Ancept Media Server, LLC (one of the DAM vendors covered in our Digital and Media Asset Management Report) has been acquired by ViewCast Corporation (OTC: VCST) of Plano, Texas.

ViewCast, founded in 1994, is primarily a hardware company, selling video capture cards and streaming encoders with Flash capability. The acquisition of Ancept is said to be part of a larger ViewCast strategy of venturing beyond live video streaming, into the broader market for production and management of digital media.

Twelve-year-old Ancept was an early player in the DAM space and was, for a time, owned by Stellent. The latter company sold off Ancept to longtime IBM iSeries systems reseller North American Systems International just a few months before the 2006 acquisition of Stellent by Oracle. Given NASI's tight relationship with IBM and the fact that Ancept's software has always run atop IBM DB2 Content Manager (or -- more recently -- FileNet P8), the NASI -Ancept deal was unsurprising.

ViewCast will reportedly purchase Ancept's assets for $1.17 million in cash payments plus $400,000 of newly issued restricted ViewCast common stock. The deal also includes a provision whereby for each of the first two years after the close, if net revenue relating to the Ancept product line exceeds $2 million, ViewCast will make an earn-out payment equal to 5 percent of the net revenue in excess of $2 million.

ViewCast says it intends to continue to maintain Ancept's offices in Bloomington, Minnesota.

While there are other hardware companies in the video-asset-management software business (notably Avid), it's unusual for a hardware vendor to venture into the general DAM market. In all likelihood, ViewCast will sell Ancept Media Server into its existing hardware-customer base before rolling it into combined hardware/software solutions packages (a' la Avid), where the Ancept software will play a supporting role in a much larger story. If you're a subscriber to our Digital and Media Asset Management research, we'll continue to keep you advised of Ancept's progress under new ownership.