The continuing journey of TabWare

I just read an excellent article by Lisa Towers of Plant Services.com related to acquisitions in the EAM space. AssetPoint , a provider of consultancy and software, was recently purchased by private equity firm Triton Pacific Capital Partners, a firm actively purchasing SME companies with high growth possibilities.

I became aware of AssetPoint when I saw that they had purchased TabWare. The story of TabWare is a bit intriguing and is one of the many tales that can easily get lost.

In the early 1990's I was just discovering databases and was resisting Microsoft Access. (As we all did initially) TabWare came to my attention because it had a series of tabs (which was pretty novel at the time) and not only that but they were vertical not horizontal.

Fluor Daniel , an engineering firm, built the product to provide value added services to their exploding client base all over the world. Back then, and still today to an extent, Fluor Daniel was just starting to emerge as a real force to be reckoned with in the maintenance space and TabWare was part of that plan.

For reasons that I am not aware of - and after a moderate level of success, they sold the TabWare division to AssetPoint in 2002, complete with the staff that were previously used to manage and drive the product.

It must have been a wise choice to sell it to a company that could focus on it as it's core business. AssetPoint now counts The New York Times, Daimler Trucks, ArcelorMittal (The worlds leading steel company) and has retained Fluor Daniel as a client also. A pretty impressive group of clients by anyones estimation. And they are one of the few asset plays that have embraced SaaS as well, so that keeps them on my "to watch" list.

The purchase of this EAM/CMMS vendor also provides some pretty intriguing insights into how investors see the maintenance arena and in particular the provision of maintenance software.

AssetPoint definitely holds an interesting and defensible position, and with its transition of part of its offering to a web based solution they are well poised in the current economic climate. Cost control, maximum effectiveness, control over resources - all elements that have risen to the fore in these trying times.

TabWare has progressed through three owners and is still a significant player in the field. Every time the new owners have been able to push the product further than its previous level. A fascinating area, and a strong indication of the strength of asset only plays in the technology space.