Wow, I completely missed this story earlier this month! Brother completed acquisition of Nefsis in early December. That is just plain weird. Nefsis is a webcasting/videoconferencing products vendor. Their solutions have been marketed under the names WiredRed and e/pop (I can’t even figure out whether these were acquisitions or just name changes).
Brother is a hardware vendor. Best known in the US for their printers, copiers, and fax machines, you can go to their home page and also see menu selections for labeling systems, sewing machines, garment printers, typewriters, machine tools, and gear motors/reducers.
I am completely confused as to why a manufacturer of office hardware wants to get into development and support of cloud-based collaboration software solutions. The press release says that Nefsis will continue operating as a wholly owned subsidiary entity as “a Brother company.” I would hope so… I can’t see the guys on the sewing machine assembly lines suddenly taking over web conferencing development!
