Management buy-in/buy-out puts Artisan Software Tools firmly on a path for accelerated growth

Artisan’s new management team intends to capitalize on Artisan Studio’s demonstrable success and proven track record both in the USA and Europe to deliver on the promise of an integrated application lifecycle environment, allowing systems and software engineering teams to work as one – from concept through to delivery and maintenance of complex, mission-critical systems.

Alan Stevens, formerly CEO of EDS’ UK operations steps in as Chairman and James B. Gambrell, the CEO of the metadata management enterprise software company, Adaptive, becomes President and CEO. The other members of the team include Jeremy Goulding as Chief Commercial Officer, Peter Kibble as head of UK Sales, Simon Moore as V.P. Development and David Kiernan as V.P. Finance.

The buy-out, financed by management, employees and Quester VCT plc, sees existing investors 3i, Pond Ventures and Pi Capital successfully exit from their original investments. Quester VCT, which is managed by SPARK Venture Management, one of the UK’s leading early-stage technology venture capital investors, now becomes the company’s largest institutional investor. The employees’ investment in the company is managed by an Employee Stock Option Plan (ESOP). The company is now controlled by its management and employees through its majority shareholding.

“According to Venture Development Corporation’s 2007 Embedded Software Market Report, Artisan is now the third largest vendor of systems and software modeling tools for the global embedded market. As such, we have a huge opportunity to accelerate the sales growth of the company and take additional market share,” said James B. Gambrell, Artisan Software Tools’ new CEO. “The opportunity is even greater when you factor in a rapidly growing market combined with current market uncertainty surrounding the proposed IBM/Telelogic merger.”

“Over the last 10 years, Artisan has earned an enviable pedigree in supporting complex, mission and safety- critical systems development for demanding customers in industries such as military, aerospace and defense,“ said Alan Stevens, Artisan’s new Chairman. “Our seasoned engineering personnel give Artisan its competitive edge in delivering standards-based process and methodology supported by the leading UML modeling tool.”

Providing complete support for UML, OMG SysML and Architectural Frameworks in a single, integrated tool suite, Artisan Studio enables large and often geographically dispersed teams of analysts, systems and software engineers to Work as OneTM, modeling systems and software for the complete project lifecycle from conception to implementation thereby avoiding the design duplication and inconsistency that often occurs if a mixture of tools and methods are employed in a project. Its powerful, centralized data repository relieves companies of the significant management overhead generally associated with multi-user access and its stable, robust working environment ensures high availability of model information, while securing all valuable data.

“The strength of Artisan Studio lies in its ability to effectively and easily support large-scale embedded systems and software development projects on which large distributed teams of engineers are deployed,” concluded James B. Gambrell. “When it comes to embedded projects of this nature, Artisan Studio is the tool suite of choice for experienced engineering teams.”