Enigma to purchase competitor’s product lines

Enigma has agreed to purchase the DynaWeb/Text and Synex product lines from Inso. Enigma, a developer of content publishing solutions for both Web and offline media, will pay $15.5 million in cash and assumption of liabilities for the technical publishing lines of Inso's product data management division. The product lines have been direct competitors of Enigma’s Insight product.

Inso currently has an install-base of some 250 “big name” customers for its technical publishing tools. Combined, Enigma will have nearly 500 customers.

"We will invest heavily in Inso's installed base, because we believe that these companies will increasingly transition their in-house e-publishing solutions to e-business solutions," said Jonathan Yaron, CEO of Enigma. "As the market leaders in high-end SGML/XML e-publishing, we will effectively leverage the offerings of both Enigma and Inso, further facilitating our supply chain strategy of enabling business-to-business e-commerce for the spare parts market."

Added Randy Clark, Enigma's VP of marketing, "Our strategy is to continue to support and build off the DynaWeb/Text product line to offer enhanced functionality for all of our customers. The advanced SGML/XML technologies of the Inso product will be a great complement to the multi-source capabilities that we already have in the Enigma product."

The biggest gain, according to Clark, is the “critical market share” that the deal helps them achieve. Enigma sees a direct benefit in terms of potentially upselling products like the Xtend tool. An indirect gain is that Enigma will likely become a more appealing partner to key software developers, said Clark.

The deal is expected to close by year’s end. About 15 Inso employees, primarily on the engineering side, are expected to relocate to Enigma’s Burlington, MA offices