TMCnet News

Leader of latest Lexmark software acquisition sees growth ahead
[February 14, 2013]

Leader of latest Lexmark software acquisition sees growth ahead


Feb 14, 2013 (Lexington Herald-Leader - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- Earlier this year, Lexmark International announced its sixth technology company acquisition since mid-2010. The Lexington-based company paid $45 million for Minneapolis-based health-care software firm Acuo Technologies.



The company, which has about 70 employees, markets its Universal Clinical Platform software to hospitals and other health-care providers. The software makes medical images, such as X-rays and MRIs, easily accessible regardless of the types of databases where they are stored.

Jeff Timbrook, chief executive of Acuo Technologies, spoke with the Herald-Leader this week about the company's new role in Lexmark's Perceptive Software unit. This is an edited transcript of the conversation.


Question: Tell me about Acuo's software and how it fits in with Lexmark's software offerings.

Answer: Back in the early 2000s, our team of engineers identified a real need in the health-care space. We saw the proliferation of a bunch of departmental systems ... that were storing data in proprietary formats.

So we built a middleware layer, kind of Google-like if you will, that would extract the data from those legacy data systems. ... It's all about content.

If you look at Lexmark and Perceptive and their portfolio, it's all about managing content ... so you can see we're a natural fit.

Q: What are your goals now as a unit in Lexmark A: Lexmark's a big brand, a worldwide brand. ... We believe Lexmark gives us the resources and infrastructure to really grow this brand worldwide, with their offices and operations and personnel across the world.

We believe we'll be able to extend into new markets.

Q: What made Lexmark an attractive buyer of Acuo A: The main theme in the acquisition was growth. ... It gave us the opportunity to grow our customer base tremendously.

Q: What fears do you have about being integrated into such a vastly larger organization A: So far, so good. The culture of the organization is very similar to ours. The customer-first attitude inside of Lexmark and Perceptive is the same mantra that we have in our organization.

We really see a great cultural fit so far and haven't really had any hiccups.

Scott Sloan: (859) 231-1447. Twitter: @HeraldLeaderBiz.

___ (c)2013 the Lexington Herald-Leader (Lexington, Ky.) Visit the Lexington Herald-Leader (Lexington, Ky.) at www.kentucky.com Distributed by MCT Information Services

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]