InFocus Corporation has acquired video wall and enterprise collaboration innovator Jupiter Systems. Jupiter’s offerings make access to critical visual information simple, secure, and reliable, and they complement InFocus’ established ecosystem. The acquisition expands InFocus’ offering to include display wall processor technology, bringing a 360-degree view of operations to any control room, conference room, and mobile device. This acquisition enables InFocus to provide end-to-end collaboration solutions.
“We know our customers need collaboration technology on their smartphones and tablets, at their desks, in their conference rooms, and in their control rooms. With one provider offering simple, enterprise-ready solutions that work together seamlessly, we can serve the full set of our customers’ requirements with powerful, integrated solutions. The convergence is inevitable, and we intend to lead it,” Mark Housley, InFocus CEO, stated in a press release. “Now InFocus can be that one-stop-shop for complete end-to-end solutions.”
Effective immediately, Jupiter Systems, which operates and manufactures in Hayward, CA, becomes an InFocus’ branded product line for control room and enterprise collaboration solutions. All Jupiter employees are now InFocus team members and both the Jupiter product line office in Hayward, and InFocus corporate headquarters in Portland, Oregon will operate business as usual.
“This is one of those moments of real synergy where combining two things created something that was better than the sum of its parts,” said Jupiter’s Brady Bruce, VP marketing and strategic alliances, in an interview.
Bruce promised that the acquisition will let the two companies cross-pollinate ideas, strengths, and core competencies. What can we look forward to—product-wise—in the future? Highly scalable and easy-to-use collaboration systems, Bruce explained. "Unique integrations that will create something new” in the marketplace.
Nothing will disappear for Jupiter, but instead, customers will have access to a new set of products from InFocus. Jupiter’s history of control room security is now paired with InFocus’ touch enabled surfaces to deliver new strengths for both entities.
On a cultural level, Housley, InFocus’ newly appointed CEO, and Jupiter’s Bruce have known each other for over 20 years. Bruce said that when the two began to talk about combining strengths, (Housley has been on the InFocus board since 2009), “we realized that as corporate entities, we were soul mates. We had the same view of the world. We thought about things in much the same way. We both spent the last several years globalizing in a significant way.” As the executive teams began to work together, there was also this feeling that they had all known each other forever. “We were all speaking the same language, and it just turned into this incredible fertile conversation about where the technology was headed; how our products could integrate.”
As someone who has been part of a half dozen acquisitions over his career, Bruce insists this is the most exciting one. “We all looked at each other and thought, ‘Why didn’t we do this before? Of course we need to do this.’”
