Ahura Scientific Acquired by Thermo Fisher to Expand  Its Portfolio of Portable Analytical Devices

Ahura has signed an agreement to be acquired by Thermo Fisher Scientific (NYSE: TMO) for $145 million in cash plus an earn-out payment based on the achievement of certain 2010 financial targets. Since the company has been very capital-efficient, this acquisition will generate a strong return for the investors.  The acquisition of Ahura will extend the breadth of Thermo Fisher’s portfolio of analytical instruments with complementary technologies, and create a powerful tool set for laboratory-quality analysis in the field.  “With a strong complementary fit between the two companies’ technologies, this acquisition represents a great outcome for our customers, employees and investors,” stated chairman and CEO Doug Kahn.

Founded in 2002, Ahura has grown rapidly to become the leading supplier of field deployed analytical instruments for human health and public safety applications. The company’s award-winning products are now deployed around the world in homeland security, public safety, pharmaceutical, industrial and medical applications.

 
Castile has been fortunate to be deeply involved with the company since its inception.  Ahura Scientific founder and president Daryoosh Vakhshoori noted: “As our founding VC, Castile has been a key ingredient of our success. Castile has provided valuable insights and guidance as we established our company, brought our products to market and scaled the business.” 

Castile is very proud of Ahura’s achievements and hope you will join us in congratulating them.  [More Info] 

PGP Corporation Acquires ChosenSecurity to Accelerate Its Plans to Enable Trust Across Multiple Security Applications

 
ChosenSecurity has signed a definitive agreement to be acquired by PGP Corporation, a global leader in email and data encryption software for enterprise data protection. With this acquisition, PGP will expand its offering with on-demand services that enable secure, trusted electronic transactions across individuals, servers, and mobile devices. Applications such as web-based banking rely on ChosenSecurity identities to secure transactions, authenticate mobile applications, and create legally enforceable digital signatures. Four of ChosenSecurity's senior team are becoming senior PGP executives with positions including VP of business development, executive director of sales and marketing, and SVP of products and technology.

 
ChosenSecurity grew to become the leading provider of PKI (Public Key Infrastructure) security services with more than 3,500 customers across the globe.  Among the company’s many achievements are its exclusive contract with CI Plus LLP, a European consortium of TV and Conditional Access Module manufacturers, to protect European Pay TV services from piracy, and its leadership in mobile code signing, as evidenced by its contract with Symbian, provider of the world's largest smart phone operating system.
 
“Strong support from our venture investors has been instrumental in enabling us to build a growing business and to successfully pioneer important new areas of identity management,” added ChosenSecurity president and CEO Bob Steinkrauss.
 
Castile has had a long relationship with many of ChosenSecurity’s talented executive team through our earlier investment in GeoTrust (acquired by VeriSign for $125 million,) and it has been a great pleasure to work with them in this second successful venture.  [More Info] 

Joe Fantuzzi Named CEO of Agiliance to Hasten Market Traction and Global Reach

Joe Fantuzzi, Agiliance

Agiliance, the leading provider of integrated Governance, Risk and Compliance solutions, has appointed Joe Fantuzzi as president and CEO.  Joe was selected to build on the company’s significant technology achievements and strong business momentum and lead the company to the next level.  Agiliance is coming from an outstanding 2009 despite the difficult economy: year-over-year revenue growth was more than 100% and the company has developed significant customer and partner relationships with organizations such as Bell Canada, Department of Health and Human Services, Kaiser Permanente, McAfee and PwC.  

 
Joe has repeatedly driven high revenue growth, customer satisfaction and shareholder success as CEO for Workshare, Liquid Engines and NetDialog.  He has also helped Autodesk, Macromedia and Interleaf diversify and achieve successful initial public offerings. "With his extensive knowledge and experience, Joe Fantuzzi is the right leader to take Agiliance to the next level," said Agiliance founder and CTO Pravin Kothari. “His experience and leadership will help us benefit from our market position and build on the outstanding performance of last year.” [More Info] 

RatePoint One-Click Facebook and Twitter Integration Extends RatePoint’s Customer Interaction Platform

Many small businesses are looking to social media to improve their customer interactions. As the leading provider of customer feedback and online reputation management services, RatePoint is now leading the market in providing seamless integration between social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, and other customer interaction services such as email marketing and online reviews.  RatePoint users can now develop email campaigns and simply click to add a link from their Twitter account and include an update via Facebook.  With this new extension of RatePoint’s offering, small businesses can now more easily tap the power of virtual networking to reach a vast group of potential new customers to build awareness and strengthen customer loyalty.
 
“Small businesses are beginning to make great use of social media, and RatePoint’s one-click integration into Facebook and Twitter makes it even easier for small businesses to use these channels to grow their business” said Neal Creighton, co-founder and CEO, RatePoint.   “The social web is changing consumer connections and presenting businesses with even more opportunities to efficiently connect with their customers.”  [More Info]

Funambol Recognized for Open Mobile Cloud Sync

With the proliferation of mobile devices, a growing challenge is keep them in sync with email systems, personal computers and social networks. Funambol uniquely solves this problem by syncing contact information, photos, email and more on multiple devices using the Internet cloud and open source. The company was recently recognized as a Mobile Superstar by Mobile Village, a mobile industry news service, and the 2009 New Product Innovation winner by Frost and Sullivan. "It is great to be recognized by so many people in the industry as a leading mobile cloud sync platform," said Funambol CEO Fabrizio Capobianco.
 
Funambol is the leading provider of open source mobile cloud sync and push email for billions of mobile devices. The company recently surpassed two million commercial users with deployments by some of the world’s largest device manufacturers, mobile operators, internet companies and service providers, including AOL, 1&1 and EarthLink. The company ensures compatibility with most mobile devices by leveraging the world’s largest mobile open source community with over 50,000 developers. [More Info]