Hyperion buys Sydney platform developer

US business performance software vendor Hyperion has bought Sydney developer QIQ Solutions, with an eye to taking its digital dashboard development platform to Europe and across Asia.

Russell Evans, MD at Hyperion in Australia, said digital dashboard applications developer QIQ Solutions had been bought and would be integrated into Hyperion's global operation. The sum paid to owner Forge Holdings was confidential, he said.

QIQ's 15 staff would be absorbed into Hyperion's development team and were being transferred immediately to the larger vendor's North Sydney premises. One or two senior staff might take up product director roles in the US, Evans added.

“The deal had been in play for a few weeks. We have a pretty long-term relationship with QIQ,” he said. “When it came down to QIQ, it was such a natural fit. We can move them across without doing a lot of integration.”

Evans said Hyperion wanted to take the QIQ product to companies in Europe and Asia, some of whom had already expressed interest in using the platform. Locally, QIQ numbers companies such as LendLease among its users.

“We have had a lot of success really in the US and Australia and now see an opportunity to expand that globally,” he said.

The buy is Hyperion's third acquisition in a year. QIQ caught the US vendor's eye for its ease of use and synergies with Hyperion Performance Suite dashboards. That package includes software from October's acquisition, business intelligence application vendor Brio.

“A lot of IT guys say they're done already with [enterprise] dashboards but you can build [QIQ ones] in 40 minutes, they currently can't do that,” Evans said.

Hyperion in Australia had grown from nine to 43 staff in about 12 months and was expected to continue growing strongly in the Australian market. However, the QIQ Solutions branding would be discarded, Evans said.

Peter Rossiter, chairman of Forge Holdings, refused to reveal the price paid for QIQ. He was not permitted to reveal a more exact figure, he said.

“I think we've done fairly well. In the current climate, compared to a lot of these deals, I think we've done very well,” Rossiter said. “Hyperion was the best home for the technology, to take it to a world market and develop it.”

Forge had been working towards divesting QIQ for some months. However, the company had been formed with the prime aim of spinning it off and selling it. Forge would now look at doing the same with QIQ's map intelligence software, which it had excluded from the sale, he said.

“We were actually suffering from a surfeit of opportunities,” Rossiter said.

Meanwhile, the QIQ sale would free Forge up to pursue further software development opportunities. “We are in the process of creating a consortium to develop sensor management opportunities and that's quite exciting for us,” Rossiter said.

Executive Information System dashboards are analytical applications for businesses with views that answer questions on a specific set of subjects. QIQ Solutions was founded in 1999 to market several products that allow business users to build interactive dashboards through a 'point and click' wizard-driven interface.

Hyperion claims to employ about 2,500 people in 20 countries. It reported annual revenues of US$622 million for the 12 months ending 30 June 2004.