Meetings technology giants StarCite Inc. and OnVantage Inc. today announced a complete merger, astonishing the industry and creating a new company that uses OnVantage's technology platform and StarCite's brand. The merger was initiated by the two companies' investor groups, which are co-owners of the new StarCite. The transaction brings together two fiercely competitive industry heavyweights of similar size, said Michael Boult, who continues as president and CEO of the Philadelphia-based company. The merger also raised some concerns about market dominance.
Existing customers of the merged companies can use their current products until they feel comfortable transitioning to the OnVantage platform, said John Chang, former CEO of Santa Clara, Calif.-based OnVantage, who now serves as chairman of StarCite. However, Boult said all future technology development will be based on the OnVantage platform.
"This is the meetings-industry equivalent of Microsoft and Apple announcing that they're merging," said Corbin Ball, president of Bellingham, Wash.-based consulting firm Corbin Ball Associates.
The StarCite brand now fully dominates the meetings technology industry, Ball said, and none of the smaller meeting technology providers could reasonably be seen as competitors. Still, Boult said, there is plenty of room for growth and competition.
"It's pretty early days in the industry," he said. "Despite the size of the business we have, we're sort of 3 percent down and 97 percent to go. We think there's an awful long way to develop this new company."
Even though the StarCite brand will continue, the market should look at the move as a merger of equals, Boult said.
"The new name of the company going forward is StarCite. In a sense, people will look at that and perhaps think that this was an acquisition because of that. But that's not the case. The StarCite brand was selected because it has continuity and more equity than OnVantage in terms of eight years versus two years. We think it's the right brand for the combined company going forward, but that has nothing to do with the actual value of the component pieces coming together," he said.
The move away from StarCite's Global Meeting Solutions platform is astonishing considering the amount of investment the company has made in upgrading it, Ball said. The company only last year integrated its products onto one platform
(Meetings Today, Aug. 15, 2005).
The merger opens the opportunity for greater benchmarking among the combined customer base of approximately 120 corporations, said Michele Snock, StarCite customer and manager of global meeting services for San Jose, Calif.-based Cisco Systems Inc. Americas operations.
"The more people that jump on this bandwagon, the more we can all progress together," Snock said. "It's great if we can take the tool out of it and get those 120 companies together to talk about how they're going to use the tool and use the best practices behind it. The tool is an enabler, but you still need all the processes and guidelines behind it."