Numara buys UniPress to strengthen helpdesk range

Acquisition will increase Numara's appeal to larger customers

Numara Software, a helpdesk software specialist focused on mid-market companies moved to broaden its appeal to larger firms today (13 September) by announcing that it has acquired helpdesk systems rival UniPress Software.

Numara chief executive David Weiss said his company's Track-It helpdesk and asset management suite was primarily aimed at lower-mid-market firms with up to 30 helpdesk staff, but the deeper functionality available UniPress's web-based FootPrints suite appealed to firms employing up to several hundred service desk staff.

"As Numara has grown we have been invited to tender for business from larger firms where their requirements went beyond what Track-It offered," said Weiss. "This deal allows us to meet their requirements and gives us two products to address two different types of customers."

Weiss added that the Footprints suite boasts greater customization capabilities, advanced change management functionality and more robust support for multisite organisations, compared to Track-It. The acquired suite also includes support for IT Infrastructure Library (Itil) best-practice processes and can integrate with firms' telephony networks.

However, though FootPrints boasts greater functionality than Track-It, it is still to easy to deploy, according to Andy White, recently appointed sales and marketing director for Numara in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia-Pacific. "Complex helpdesk solutions tend to require consultants to handle the workflow," he said. "But FootPrints has a wizard-based infrastructure that allows you to deploy an Itil-based infrastructure quickly and easily."

Weiss said Track-It and FootPrints would continue to be developed and sold as two separate product lines, but added that some integration work would be undertaken to ensure Numara customers with growing service desks have a clear upgrade path.

Separately, Numara launched an updated version of the FootPrints suite and three new service desk products.

The company said Numara FootPrints 7.5 features enhanced workflow and reporting functionality as well as an improved interface to better support third-party text-to-speech software for vision-impaired users.

It also unveiled new change management and asset management suites and a new module to tighten integration between FootPrints and personal information management applications such as Outlook and Lotus Notes.