Bentley Keeps On Acquiring

By Ralph Grabowski, editor, upFront.eZine, January 7, 2003
(reprinted by permission)

See Also

· Bentley to Acquire Infrasoft - this acquisition confirms that Autodesk and Bentley are squaring off in the civil engineering/transportation arena, Adena Schutzberg, GIS Monitor, January 7, 2003

When Bentley Systems announced last year its intention to sell shares to the public, it said one major reason was to have the money to acquire other companies. Later in the year, it dropped the plan to go public; the lack of extra cash did not stop it from acquiring companies anyhow. [Curious, eh?]

Last year, it bought Rebis; last month, it bought Cadac; and yesterday it bought Infrasoft. Infrasoft has software for civil engineering design and infrastructure management for MicroStation and AutoCAD. The purchase price was not announced, but Infrasoft CEO Rick Fiery hinted it involved Bentley shares.

The purchase will help Bentley compete against civil engineering software from Intergraph, Autodesk and others. Bentley says that Infrasoft's technology will "expand its initiative to support users of the DWG file format." Bentley will continue to support AutoCAD users of MX software, but no doubt hopes they will migrate to MicroStation eventually. Infrasoft is currently an Autodesk Partner.

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