West Corporation, which just bought Raindance less than two months ago, today announced that Gary and Mary West plan to sell the company to an investor group led by Thomas H. Lee Partners and Quadrangle Group. Never a dull moment around Raindance, eh? Chin up, boys and girls... at least they haven't announced plans to rename and rebrand the company (although I wouldn't rule it out). That's life in the technology world.
I worked in the same product group at a Silicon Valley software manufacturer for five years. Without changing jobs, I managed to work for five different company names during those five years. Actually it was six names, but I'm not counting a relatively minor suffix change. Every year, like clockwork, we would have to interrupt our normal product marketing activities telling a forward-moving story and instead spend a lot of time and money rebranding the stuff we already had. Ugh.
I noted that within seven hours of the announcement, the law firm of Ademi & O'Reilly had drafted a class action complaint against the company, saying they took too low an offer. Class action specialists are quick on the trigger!
I don't expect any effect upon users of the Raindance software. This seems to be purely a corporate financial maneuver. But nobody like change or uncertainty, and that's all they've got nowadays.
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