Melbourne IT sells digital recording division

Melbourne IT will offload its digital recording division for $6.3 million as it continues to divest assets in a bid to return to its roots as a hosting company.

The buyer is Record Holdings, which makes software to manage digital recordings from law courts and also owns a court recording and transcription service, Auscript.

The all-cash transaction is expected to close at the end of the month, resulting in a loss on sale of $1.2 million, according to a financial filing by Melbourne IT.

Melbourne IT CEO Theo Hnarakis told iTnews back in March that the digital recording division — called ForTheRecord (FTR) — was up for sale, but that the company was in no particular hurry to sell.

"There's no burning hurry for us to sell. It's not a direct fit [for Melbourne IT], but it's not a distraction either," he said.

The buyer has been collaborating with ForTheRecord for almost a year. In September last year, Record Holdings' Court Record Solutions business signed an exclusive deal with FTR "to integrate their products into an end-to-end record production, management and access system".

Melbourne IT inherited the FTR business in its 2006 acquisition of the WebCentral Group. It was on the chopping block early, owing to its lack of fit with Melbourne IT's portfolio, but the company decided to keep it in 2007.

In March this year, Melbourne IT divested its digital brand services business to IT services giant CSC for $152.5 million.