Motorola Solutions to buy Spillman Technologies

Motorola Solutions today continued its acquisition strategy, announcing the purchase of Spillman Technologies, a provider of on-premise and cloud-based solutions to more than 1,700 Tier 2 and Tier 3 public-safety entities.

Like Motorola Solutions, Spillman Technologies supplies an integrated suite of public-safety solutions, but the customer bases of the two companies are very complementary, according to Tom Guthrie, Motorola Solutions’ vice president of smart public-safety solutions.

“We already have in the market a CAD, records and jail suite under the name of PremierOne, but that’s primarily targeted at Tier 1 customers—the upper end of the market,” Guthrie said during an interview with IWCE’s Urgent Communications We were very interested in adding some capabilities, so we could cover all of our customer base.

“That led us to Spillman Technology. In a sense, that’s going to allow us to cover effectively any customer, from small to large. Both of the products will stay in the portfolio suite—both PremierOne and Flex [the primary Spillman product].”

Spillman Technologies has screened potential customer “pretty carefully” to ensure that they would not grow to a Tier 1 level that the company would not be serve adequately, according to Spillman Technologies President and CEO Lance Clark. By becoming part of Motorola Solutions, that will not be an issue in the future, he said.

“This gives us opportunity now to have a solution for any agency in public safety, whether it is a very large or very small agency—we cover all of the tiers, and we’re very excited about that,” Clark said during an interview with IWCE’s Urgent Communications.

“This acquisition really opens the doors for us to all tiers of the market, so we don’t have to have that filtering process, because we can provide any solution that’s needed.”

Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Motorola Solutions announced that the purchase is expected to close sometime in the fourth quarter, and Guthrie said that could happen as soon as late October. The Spillman Technologies’ Flex and Nova product brands will remain in the market, but the operation will be marketed as Motorola solutions, he said.

Motorola Solutions plans to keep all Spillman Technologies employees and have the company operate as it currently does in the short term, with the idea of integrating Motorola Solutions’ products to help the new Salt Lake City-based operation prosper in the future, Guthrie said.

“It’s the next addition to the family and to the suite that we intend to both grow and integrate.” he said.

Clark said he believes the Motorola Solutions acquisition will let Spillman Technologies accelerate into the next-generation 911 (NG911) market, particularly as its products are integrated into Motorola Solutions offerings, particularly Emergency CallWorks and PublicEngines—both of which are products of recent acquisitions.