ORLANDO, Fla. With Microsoft’s TechEd 2012 opening up comes news of GrapeCitys acquisition of ComponentOne, a key distributor of Microsoft components.
GrapeCity, based in Sendai, Japan, has been in the software business for 25 years and has long been a provider of Microsoft components. ComponentOne, based in Pittsburgh, with globally based facilities, is a leader in the Microsoft Visual Studio component industry and is a premier partner of Microsoft. According to recent blog posts, GrapeCity will acquire ComponentOne as of July 1.
In a recent blog post, Rich Dudley, a technical evangelist for ComponentOne, said, For nearly two decades, ComponentOne and GrapeCity have enjoyed a very close relationship. In Japan, GrapeCity PowerTools are the top-selling controls, and they include localized versions of ComponentOne studios (in the U.S. market, people know GrapeCity PowerTools as ActiveReports and Spread, more on those in a bit). Our companies have collaborated at the highest levels for many years.
The two companies have worked together since 1994. With the purchase of ComponentOne, GrapeCity PowerTools and ComponentOne will be merged into a new company, known as ComponentOne, a division of GrapeCity, Dudley said. ActiveReports and Spread will again be rebranded, to ComponentOne ActiveReports and ComponentOne Spread. In the coming weeks, the GrapeCity PowerTools office in North Carolina will be closed, many GrapeCity personnel will move to Pittsburgh (the home of ComponentOne) and all ComponentOne personnel will become GrapeCity employees.
Microsofts TechEd 2012 in Orlando will be the debutante ball for the new ComponentOne, Dudley said. It will be difficult to miss us, and youll probably notice a new spring in everyones step. You can take great pride in your work when you know you are providing developers controls that complement Microsoft controls better than any other vendor on the market. Our controls are built by developers, for developers, who understand the need for easy and familiar controls, giving one more time to focus on business logic. Nowhere else can you find such powerful reporting tools, amazing Excel-like spreadsheet controls and well-designed business intelligence and data visualization tools.