DATALEX, the Dublin-based supplier of information technology solutions to the travel and transport industry, has announced the acquisition of the Amsterdam-based company, Hyperion, for $3 million (£2 million).
Hyperion, a consulting services and software development company for the airline and travel industry, employs 31 people and will trade under the Datalex name in the new year. It was owned by the Dutch software services company, Origin, which, in turn, is a subsidiary of Philips. The acquisition follows the purchase earlier this year of NRG, the Dublin-based mainframe software development company, for about £750,000, and Web Ventures, a US Internet development company, for about £3.4 million. Mr Neil Wilson, Datalex's chief executive, said the acquisition was made from the company's cash reserves. Hyperion's clients include the Dutch airline, KLM, and the French national railway company, SNCF.
The company provides functional, systems, communications and technical consulting expertise in the mainframe and UNIX installations of reservation systems for airlines, railways and GDS.
Mr Wilson said the acquisition would increase Datalex's professional services division from the current 20 employees to over 50 and enable it to double the size of the projects it can take on, bringing it into the $5 to $10 million range. Datalex was established in 1985 and now has three offices in the US, in Denver, Colorado and Atlanta. Following the acquisition, the number of its employees will increase from 87 to 138. It counts Aer Lingus and British Airways among its clients and has about 17 per cent of 150,000 travel agents worldwide operating its technology, connecting it to the four airline computer reservation systems - Sabre, Galileo, WorldSpan and Amadeus.
Last April, the company raised £4 million in equity finance, with ICC Venture taking a 15 per cent shareholding. International Investment Underwriters (IIU), the company owned by the financier, Mr Dermot Desmond, holds 10 per cent, and Enterprise Ireland holds 8 per cent.
