Sweden's Hexagon buys Intergraph for $2.1 bln
Who saw that coming? Not me.
Here's a link to the Reuters story. More thoughts and analysis when I make sense of it all.
For those who may not know: Hexagon owns Leica Geosystems -- purveyor of fine (and expensive) GPS equipment. Leica seems to be going from being an ESRI partner to becoming a competitor with the flip of a switch. What will happen to the MobileMatriX -- Leica's flagship ArcGIS extension?
Stay tuned.
Posted by Atanas Entchev at 7/7/2010 10:24 AM 
Categories: news, GPS, GIS, business, ERDAS, Intergraph, Leica, LiDAR, ESRI, ArcGIS
Tags: Hexagon ERDAS Leica Geosystems GIS business ArcGIS MobileMatriX Leica LiDAR Intergraph ESRI news GPS
Categories: news, GPS, GIS, business, ERDAS, Intergraph, Leica, LiDAR, ESRI, ArcGIS
Tags: Hexagon ERDAS Leica Geosystems GIS business ArcGIS MobileMatriX Leica LiDAR Intergraph ESRI news GPS
The previous owner purchased it for $1.2B in Nov. 2006. Even if they had operating losses during that period, they've still shown the investment community that geospatial has good ROI.
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Hellman+%26+Friedman+and+Texas+Pacific+Group+Complete+Acquisition+of...-a0155173064
Any loss to ESRI from this might be compensated by the resulting increase in VC money attracted to the geospatial arena. Hopefully the rising tide of increased investments will lift other ESRI partners.
An excellent point. I am still curious what will happen with the MobileMatriX, Leica's ArcGIS extension, as I know the people who put in the effort. I will follow up on that story.