As part of its strategy is to assemble an automated content acquisition, management, collaboration and
delivery product for mid-market customers, Woburn, Mass.-based TopicalNet Inc. today announced that it has agreed to purchase the assets of LightSpeed Interactive Inc. of
Pleasanton, Calif.
The deal is designed to combine TopicalNet’s capability to
automatically gather, understand and classify electronic content with
the ReadyPortal portal platform (acquired from Wego Systems in June) and now Lightspeed’s content management service.
Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed. The
new company will be named LightSpeed Software and corporate headquarters will be relocated from Woburn
to San Francisco.
Lightspeed Interactive is the fifth company TopicalNet has
acquired since April 2001. “This acquisition is the final piece of a puzzle we have been
assembling for more than a year. We can now offer mid-market customers
a complete solution for their vast amounts of electronic content. They will be able to gather their data, place it under
management, publish and distribute it, collaborate or share, and
finally measure and track content usage,” said Ray Kingman, CEO of the
newly named LightSpeed Software, Inc.
Kingman said TopicalNet opted to take advantage of the LightSpeed name to reflect its objective to create an integrated product that can be up and running in a matter of days.
The company’s goal is to combine Lightspeed Interactive’s content management products
with TopicalNet’s XML-based search, classification/metadata,
portal/collaboration and analytics technologies to allow customers to manage both
internal and external content.
Customers of Lightspeed Interactive include Texas Instruments,
Lexis/Nexis, Brookfield Homes, Siemens Medical and TRW. In addition to major organizations, more than 70 percent Lightspeed customers are system integrators or have reseller networks, which, the company reports, will allow it to broaden its market focus.
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