Softricity Inc., a Boston-based application platform provider, today announced that it has acquired the intellectual property of Seaport Software Inc., a Cambridge, Mass.-based company that specializes in enabling independent software vendors (ISVs) to provide software rental services over broadband networks.
The goal of the acquisition is to strengthen Softricity’s patent portfolio, according to the company. Softricity’s technology is designed to enable software to run on Windows desktops and terminal servers without being installed locally.
David Greschler, Softricity’s co-founder and executive vice president, marketing and strategy, said the company is not disclosing terms of the deal, but he did confirm that there are no plans to retain any employees of Seaport Software.
Greschler describes Seaport Software as “the leader in the software-on-demand industry for gaming and entertainment. They had deals with all the major carriers, from AT&T Broadband to Comcast.”
“They developed a very strong patent that describes a method of running software without installation. This is one of the key pieces of their assets that interested us, as one of our main benefits is offering a way to deploy applications without ever installing the software,” Greschler told ASPnews. “We now have the patent high ground in this area.”
Softricity’s SoftGrid technology is designed to eliminate the need to install Windows desktop applications on a machine-by-machine basis, allowing software to be deployed and managed from a single location as a network service.
SoftGrid also enhances Citrix MetaFrame deployments, according to Softricity, by eliminating “DLL Hell” problems common to Terminal Services environments where multiple applications install different versions of files and settings on their host computer.
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