SirsiDynix joins the private equity firm party 2006 December 23
SirsiDynix must have felt left out of the dance at the library systems private equity firm party that is happening at Fransisco Partners, and has found its own partner in Vista Equity Partners. The only place I’ve seen any news about this is in Dan Scott’s Coffee|Code blog. He has some interesting speculation about what this will mean for SirsiDynix and their customers. It seems the press release is still a few days away. The details (at least to a non-SirsiDynix customer) are a little vague about how much Vista is investing in SirsiDynix and how it will effect SirsiDynix and its products seems still up in the air at this point. It is interesting to me that these private equity firms are investing in the library software market. Obviously they expect to see a profit in doing so, but I’m not sure where it will end up coming from.
[...] I wrote previously that Vista Equity Partners was going to invest in SirsiDynix. The deal was officially announced on December 27. Well, it seems that Vista is doing more than investing, it is purchasing SirsiDynix. What well this mean, I’m not sure but Vista is saying that it won’t change much with SirsiDynix. Personally, I think that wouldn’t be a good move for customers of SirsiDynix. While SirsiDynix is a market leader in the public library market (and is the leader or near the top in some other library markets), their flagship Integrated Library Systems (ILS) product (as with all proprietary ILS products) can use a good deal of work. Library Journal picked up on Dan Scott’s blog post and is also speculating that the big difference customers might see is higher costs. I guess if that happens – especially without an improved product – maybe more libraries will seriously begin to consider Open Source solutions such as Evergreen and Koha. [...]