Santa Ana’s Identive Group Inc., a maker of scanners, readers, cards and other security devices for buildings and computers, plans to use the proceeds of its recent stock sale to acquire companies or expand production, according to company officials.
“Part of our growth strategy is to acquire companies” and “rapidly gain scale,” company spokeswoman Darby Dye said.
“We need to continue to have funds available to carry out that strategy,” she said.
The company raised $18.3 million after fees late last month after selling some 7.8 million shares.
Cowen Group Inc. and Morgan Joseph TriArtisan LLC, both of New York, handled the sale.
The investment banks had access to 1.2 million more shares to meet extra demand.
In April, Identive filed for permission from regulators to offer stock and debt from time to time.
The filing allows Identive to raise up to $100 million by selling various forms of shares and debt.
In Santa Ana, Identive specializes in designing and making devices for what’s called physical access—security systems that let only certain people inside a building.
The company’s products are big on biometrics, or using fingerprint or eye scans to verify identity.
Customers include federal, state and local governments here and abroad. It also sells to hospitals, schools and utility companies.
Identive had 2010 sales of about $85 million and is working toward profitability after a string of losses.
Ingram, Siemens Cloud Deal
Santa Ana-based technology products distributor Ingram Micro Inc. is set to roll out cloud computing products for small to midsize businesses from Siemens Enterprise Communications, a venture of Germany’s Siemens AG and Los Angeles private equity firm The Gores Group.
The offerings, which allow email, instant messaging, phone calls and other communications to be managed together, are part of Ingram’s growing cloud products under what the company calls the Ingram Micro Cloud Marketplace.
Cloud computing helps companies cut costs by allowing them to offload big databases, software programs and networking to servers run by third parties.
The move into cloud-based computing comes amid a push by Ingram to improve its slim profit margins. Ingram, the biggest distributor of computer products, software and consumer electronics, nets pennies on the dollar.
The company sees software and other corporate services built around the cloud as the biggest source of growth in the coming years.
Cloud-related business made up a quarter of the company’s revenue from its North American services division last year, according to Ingram.
These applications can help smaller businesses do backup and recovery, collect business data, handle email, process and store payments, among other tasks that take up a lot of space on a network.
Ingram supplies products from Microsoft Corp., Cisco Systems Inc. and others to what are known as value-added resellers—consultants that install and maintain technology products for businesses. It is looking to help its reseller customers boost sales to their own customers, which typically are smaller businesses.
“The combination of cloud computing and unified communications solutions is redefining how businesses engage and bringing with it profitable new services opportunities,” said Renée Bergeron, vice president of managed services and cloud computing for Ingram’s North America operations.
Ingram works with some big players in cloud computing, including Microsoft, Rackspace US Inc. and Amazon Web Services LLC, part of Amazon.com Inc.
Quest Buy
Aliso Viejo-based business software maker Quest Software Inc. acquired a maker of software that boosts access to data stored on various computers on a network.
Quest acquired Chicago-based Symlabs Inc. for undisclosed terms, presumably small.
Symlabs makes software that culls together data stored in various places on a network in a seamless way for users.
The software is used on corporate, mobile, Internet and other networks. Customers include IBM Corp., Barclays PLC and Nokia Corp.
Quest, which sells software that helps corporations become more efficient by improving on existing applications, routinely makes small acquisitions.
Last month, Quest acquired Montana’s RemoteScan Corp., a maker of software that tracks scanners and other imaging devices on corporate networks.
In other Quest news, the company’s Carl Eberling was one of 10 recipients of the InfoWorld 2011 Technology Leadership Award. The vice president and general manager of virtualization and monitoring was selected for using virtualization for specific applications rather than a blanket approach.
Kingston Device
The flash memory unit of Fountain Valley’s Kingston Technology Co., the top maker of memory products for computers and consumer electronics, is launching a wireless storage device this month for iPad, iPhone and iPod users. The flash memory device can store documents, images, music, and video files. The 16-gigabyte product sells for about $130. A 32-gigabyte model goes for $175 … Kingston is the county’s top revenue earner among privately held companies. It posted record 2010 sales of $6.5 billion, up from $4.1 billion, or nearly 59%, from a year earlier.
