Attachmate

Attachmate is a software company owned by an investment group led by Francisco Partners, Golden Gate Capital, and Thoma Cressey Bravo. Attachmate focuses on terminal emulation, legacy modernization, managed file transfer, and enterprise fraud management software. It is the largest privately owned software company in Washington, USA.

Type Private

Industry Computer software

technology services

Founded Bellevue, Washington, 1981

Headquarters Seattle, Washington

Key people Jeff Hawn, President and CEO;

Bob Flynn, SVP Global Sales and GM 

Host Connectivity Solutions;

Charles Sansbury, CFO;

Logan Wray, SVP Acquisitions, GM NetIQ BU

Products Terminal Emulator Software,

Interoperability Software,

Security Software

Website http://www.attachmate.com

Products

The Attachmate logo on older software products.

As a result of the mergers and acquisitions detailed below, Attachmate has broadened its solution set to include several brands:

Terminal Emulation

Attachmate develops a variety of Terminal emulators:

Reflection (IBM, HP, UNIX, OpenVMS, X)

EXTRA! (IBM, UNIX, OpenVMS)

INFOConnect (Unisys)

Systems and Security Management

The NetIQ business unit delivers systems and security management software.

Among the NetIQ product offerings is AppManager, a suite that provides network, applications and systems monitoring. The product includes monitoring support Microsoft operating systems, Microsoft SQL Server databases, a variety of messaging environments, UNIX and Linux operating systems, Oracle systems, and Voice-over-IP for Cisco, Nortel, and Avaya.

Secure Communications

Reflection for Secure IT, formerly F-Secure SSH, is an SSH (secure shell) client and server for Windows and UNIX.

Application Integration

Attachmate Verastream provides application integration tools that quickly and noninvasively service-enable mainframe and enterprise host data and logic.

Attachmate DATABridge is an extract, transform, load (ETL) solution for securely integrating Unisys DMSII and non-DMSII data to a secondary database such as Oracle or Microsoft SQL Server.

PC X Server

Reflection X allows Windows users to use graphical and command-line based applications on remote UNIX, Linux, and OpenVMS hosts.

History

 Attachmate Corporation

Attachmate, founded in 1982 by Frank W. Pritt and Tom Borkowski, focused initially on the IBM terminal emulation market, and became a major technology employer in the Seattle area. Based in Bellevue, Washington, the company became one of the largest PC software companies in the world, with offices in more than 50 cities in North America and in 30 countries. The company made several acquisitions, through mergers and purchases, to expand its range of host access hardware and software solutions. Its products and the company itself won numerous awards, including being named one of the “Best Companies to Work For” by Washington CEO magazine.

Attachmate served 80% of Fortune 500 and Global 2000 companies, with over 13 million users worldwide. Attachmate's major development locations included their headquarters in Bellevue, an office in Bellingham, Washington, and a facility in Cincinnati, Ohio. In the early days, Attachmate focused on 3270 emulation for PCs with some hardware 3270 boards as well. Attachmate invested heavily in its sales and marketing organization worldwide in the early 90s and quickly grew its market share from 3rd in the host-connectivity market to 1st with its EXTRA! Personal Client product. The company continued to grow organically as well as through acquisition of KEA Systems (makers of KEAterm VT340 and VT420 terminal emulators, and KEA X x terminal software), and DCA (makers of IRMA line of emulators, INFOconnect, Crosstalk communications software, and OpenMind collaborative software). Later, the company also acquired The Wollongong Group (makers of Pathway TCP and Emissary).

After the acquisition of DCA, the company quickly dominated the 3270, 5250 and VT marketplace, and built its revenues in excess of $400 million in 1995 - as compared to roughly $40M just five years earlier. A Senior Management transition led by incoming CEO Jim Lindner made an attempt to create a unified product strategy and take the company public. The strategy received positive reviews from customers and the press initially but eventually stalled as a clash between Pre and Post DCA-merger management destabilized product development and Frank Pritt took back the helm in July 1996.

Bill Boisvert, formerly of Paccar, was the next president from January 1998 until his resignation in October 2000 after a year of layoffs and flat revenue growth.

The next stage of its history was marked by tight fiscal management and managing to the bottom line. As revenues were impacted through the bursting tech bubble after 2001, Attachmate was hit with successive rounds of layoffs. In 2001, the Burnaby development center was closed; in June 2002 the Cincinnati development center was closed and the company's VP of Development was fired.

On April 18, 2005, it was announced that three investment companies, Golden Gate Capital, Francisco Partners, and Thoma Cressey Equity Partners, would buy Attachmate. Attachmate would be merged with long-time competitor WRQ, whom the investors had bought previously.

Attachmate no longer sells or supports 3270 IRMA, SDLC, or ISCA SDLC hardware adapters, or provides driver downloads. In February of 2007, they sold their remaining hardware inventory to Alpine Computer Systems, a legacy equipment reseller, and refers customers to them for sales and service on hardware adapters and drivers.

WRQ, Inc.

In 1981, Doug Walker, Mike Richer and Marty Quinn founded Walker, Richer & Quinn (WRQ) to integrate microcomputers with existing IT environments. The company set its sights on the Hewlett-Packard market, launching the first commercially viable terminal emulator for the HP 3000. Based in Seattle, Washington, WRQ was one of the 20 largest software companies, and consistently ranked in Fortune magazine’s “100 Best companies to Work for in America,” and Washington CEO magazine’s “Best Companies to Work For.”[when?]

On December 6, 2004, it was announced that WRQ had been purchased by an investment group.

Attachmate and WRQ merger

After buying both WRQ, Inc. and Attachmate Corporation, who had been long-time competitors in the host emulation business, it was announced that the companies would be merged. On June 1, 2005, the deal closed, and the new company was named AttachmateWRQ.

In June 2005, shortly after the merger was made official, AttachmateWRQ announced that its corporate headquarters would be located in WRQ's Seattle, Washington location. The vacated headquarters of Attachmate in the Factoria neighborhood of Bellevue, Washington were quickly filled by T-Mobile, who already occupied part of the building.

The company continued to support both Attachmate and WRQ product sets (which overlap in many cases) until products could be merged or replaced.

NetIQ Acquisition

NetIQ, founded in 1995 by Ching-Fa Hwang, Her-daw Che, Hon Wong, Ken Prayoon Cheng and Thomas R. Kemp, was a company that provided systems management and security management software. It provided businesses worldwide with solutions to monitor, analyze, and optimize the performance, availability, and security of IT infrastructure. Its flagship products included AppManager and Security Manager. The company headquarters were in San Jose, California, with about 900 employees worldwide. Their Nasdaq ticker symbol was NTIQ.

NetIQ's toolset included systems, security, VoIP and Administration software.

On April 27, 2006, AttachmateWRQ announced an agreement to acquire NetIQ for about 495 million USD, and that the deal would close in 90 days. NetIQ would be merged into AttachmateWRQ, creating a single company with $400 million annual revenue and over 40,000 customers in 60 countries. On June 20, they announced that NetIQ shareholders had approved this purchase, and the acquisition would be complete by the end of that month. 

On July 5, 2006, both companies released a press release announcing the closing of the deal. The new company would do business under the name Attachmate Corporation.

 OnDemand Acquisition and Sale

On March 7, 2006, AttachmateWRQ announced that they had acquired OnDemand Software. OnDemand Software develops an award-winning product called WinINSTALL, which is for desktop management in IT environments. This product is similar to AttachmateWRQ's existing NetWizard product. The high-quality WinINSTALL product combined with AttachmateWRQ's global sales presence provides significant opportunities for the company.

However, on June 30, 2008, Scalable Software announced in a press release that they had acquired the WinINSTALL business unit (substantially all assets of the former OnDemand) from Attachmate. WinINSTALL was the desktop management suite previously acquired by Attachmate from OnDemand Software.

CEO Controversy

Jeff Hawn—the president and CEO of Seattle-based Attachmate who lives in Austin, Texas—has been sentenced to 10 days in jail for authorizing the slaughter of 32 of his neighbor's bison that wandered onto his Colorado ranch. Hawn pleaded guilty in November to criminal mischief and animal cruelty. Hawn and hired hands shot and killed 32 bison, which had wandered onto and near his property from a neighboring ranch in Park County, Colorado — including cows carrying calfs. In Colorado, bison are allowed to wander under open-range laws.

The arrest warrant said most were left to rot.

Hawn, plead guilty to criminal mischief and cruelty to animals and was released free on a $15,000 bail. The Denver Post reports that the judge sentenced Hawn to 10 days in jail.

 Novell Acquisition

Novell announced in November 2010 that it had agreed to be aquired by Attachmate for $2.2 billion. Attachmate plans to operate Novell as two units, one being SUSE. Certain intellectual property assets are planned to be sold to a consortium of companies led by Microsoft.

(source:wikipedia)