Precise Software

Precise Software Solutions is an Israeli-American company that develops Application Performance Management software products.

Early history

Precise Software Solutions was founded in Tel Aviv in 1990 by Haim Kopans, who served the company in various roles (CTO, VP Product Management and Head of R&D) until 2002. Initial funding was provided by Jerusalem Venture Partners (JVP).^[1]

In September 1997, Shimon Alon, formerly President and Chief Executive Officer of Scitex America, became the company’s CEO. He led the company to 14 consecutive quarters of record growth. Then in June 2000, Precise completed an initial public offering on NASDAQ followed by a successful secondary public offering in November 2000. The company’s shares were traded under the Ticker symbol PRSE.^[2]

In 1998, a Precise/EMC relationship was formed beginning with a joint development project and resulting in an OEM arrangement through which EMC began reselling Precise's technology in its product offerings. Subsequently, EMC took an investment position in Precise.^[3]

In the fourth quarter of 1999, EMC Corporation began selling Precise products under the name Database (DB) Tuner. EMC marketed an exclusive bundled version of various Precise offerings including Precise/Indepth for Oracle, Precise/Indepth for DB2 UDB and Precise/Presto for EMC software. Database (DB) tuner was intended for use solely with EMC's storage products.^[4]

For the year ending December 2002, the company reported revenues of $76 million.^{[5] [6]}

Veritas Acquires Precise

On June 2003, Veritas Software acquired Precise for about $400 million in cash and 7.4 million shares of its stock, a total cost of about $609 million.^[6]

Symantec Acquires Veritas

On December 16, 2004, Veritas and Symantec announced their plans for a merger. With Veritas valued at $13.5 billion, it was the largest software industry merger to date. Symantec's shareholders voted to approve the merger on June 24, 2005. On July 5, 2005 the new merged company(s) began operations.

Symantec Spins out Precise

On January 17, 2008, Symantec announced ^[7] that they were spinning off the Application Performance Management (Precise Software Solutions) business to Vector Capital. Upon closing of the transaction, Precise Software Solutions had again taken over all development, product management, marketing and sales for this APM business.

To ensure a smooth transition for customers and the new company overall, Symantec continued to support the APM business post closing via a transition services agreement with Precise Software. It provided an easy migration path for Symantec-branded APM customers. Additionally, Symantec and Vector signed an agreement allowing Symantec to continue to sell APM software and support to its customers.

Idera Acquires Precise

In July 2013, application and server management software provider Idera Software acquired Precise. Idera CEO Randy Jacops assumed leadership of the company.^[8] Jacops expressed a desire to use the combined technologies to "[...] cover an end-to-end solution for all customer bases.”^[9]

References