Mercury Computer Sells Shared Storage Unit To Ibm-Owned Tivoli Systems - Company Business and Marketing

EDP Weekly's IT Monitor, Dec 20, 1999

Mercury Computer Systems Inc., the Chelmsford, Mass., provider of embedded real-time digital signal and image processing computer systems, is selling its Shared Storage Business Unit (SSBU) to IBM-owned software maker Tivoli Systems for $23.5 million. Mercury's SSBU group will become part of the Storage Solutions unit of Tivoli, and will be located in the Westford-Lowell area of Massachusetts.

"When we issued the offering memorandum earlier this year, our desire was to sell the business unit to a company focused on the shared storage market with the channel and resources to get maximum leverage from our innovative technology, offering our SSBU employees an exciting future and Mercury a fair return on our R&D investment in shared storage intellectual property," says Mercury CEO Jay Bertelli. "The transaction with Tivoli and the IBM Corp. certainly meets our expectations."

The deal is structured to provide Mercury with an ongoing stream of earnings with an initial payment of $4.5 million followed by 12 equal quarterly payments.