Business

India technology giant acquires Belfast software firm Aepona

&nbsp;<span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: sans-serif, Arial, Verdana, 'Trebuchet MS';  line-height: 20.7999992370605px;">&nbsp;</span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: sans-serif, Arial, Verdana, 'Trebuchet MS';  line-height: 20.7999992370605px;">Persistent Systems Ltd has acquired Belfast-based software firm Aepona</span>
    Persistent Systems Ltd has acquired Belfast-based software firm Aepona

BELFAST-headquartered communications software firm Aepona, which since 2013 has been owned by Intel, has been acquired for an undisclosed sum by Indian-based software product and technology services provider Persistent Systems Ltd (PSI).

In a statement to the stock market, PSI confirmed that its California-based subsidiary Persistent Systems Inc had entered into an agreement with Intel Overseas Funding Corporation to acquire the entire stock of Aepona Holdings Ltd.

As part of the deal, PSI will acquire five subsidiaries of Aepona Holdings - including its operations in Belfast and Dublin - as well as the intellectual property rights for certain Aepona products.

Aepona, which works to monetise network and cloud services, can trace its roots back to Aldiscon, the Dublin-based pioneer of text messaging.

Aldiscon was sold to Logica in 1994 and then Apion was founded, which prospered in the mobile internet market before being sold to Openwave in 1999.

Aepona was then founded to capitalise on the market for telecom value added services, and it has grown both organically and through acquisitions ever since, snapping up such companies as Swedish application server seller Appium in 2007 and, two years later, payments and settlement solutions provider Valista.

Aepona's chief financial officer Michael Black was awarded an MBE earlier this year for services to the Northern Ireland ICT industry.

PSI, which operates from offices in Bangalore, Nagpur, Goa and Hyderabad, develops software solutions in next-generation technology areas such as cloud computing and big data.