[Montreal, CANADA] BiblioMondo launched today after Canadian software
company Best-Seller acquired the European company ALS International
and renamed it BiblioMondo.
The acquisition was financed by Investissement Desjardins, the Royal
Bank of Canada, a European private investor, and TechnoCap of
Montreal.
“With over 19 million users and the largest library network in the
world, BiblioMondo is the World’s eLibrary Network,” said Marc
Balevi, managing partner and executive vice president of TechnoCap,
Canada’s largest netOptical Venture Capitalist.
“BiblioMondo’s massively scalable networking of the worlds 712,000
multimedia libraries and access to their vast content via the
Internet is compelling.”
Kevin Restivo, an analyst with IDC (Canada) said that the enterprise
market for Internet and Intranet Corporate and Public multimedia
libraries is approximately one billion dollars. He said that it is a
vertical niche that BiblioMondo moved into, and that was the right
way to go.
With 2001 revenues projected at over $15 million, 140 employees and
offices in six countries, BiblioMondo has network nodes in London,
Paris, Cologne, Amsterdam, Philadelphia, and Montreal, and already
has 1400 clients in nine countries.
With over 19 million users, BiblioMondo now has the largest network
of online libraries in the world. Its clients in North America
include America Online, Hydro-Quebec, and the Bibliotheque Nationale
du Quebec. In Europe major customers include the Bibliotheque
municipale de Lyon, the City of Hamburg, and ProBiblio, which is
simultaneously the largest library network in the Netherlands and in
the world.
Investissement Desjardins is the venture capital arm of the Mouvement
Desjardins, covering investment in growth companies and investment
funds. It aims to create value in associated companies and help them
achieve a significant position in their sector of activity, on both
Canadian and international markets.
TechnoCap is a net-focused venture company that is in the business of
building companies focused on extensive scalable networking.
http://www.desjardins.com/id
http://www.royalbank.com
http://www.Technocap.com