Avid (Nasdaq: AVID) has further advanced its Avid Everywhere vision by completing its acquisition of Orad Hi-Tec Systems, a provider of state-of-the-art 3D real-time graphics, video servers, and related workflow management solutions. The Orad product lines are highly complementary to the Avid MediaCentral Platform, and allow Avid to further deliver on its commitment to give media organizations and creative professionals more comprehensive workflows with greater choice, flexibility, and operational efficiency.
More than 600 customers worldwide currently rely on Orad’s cutting-edge technology to produce graphics, live events, and sports broadcasts. Avid plans to expand its portfolio and distribution network with Orad’s comprehensive line of news, channel branding, sports production and enhancement, elections and special events, virtual studios, video walls, and virtual advertisement products. With this expanded capability, media organizations on the Avid MediaCentral Platform should be able to reduce the burden of piecing together disparate fragmented workflows in their production environments, resulting in less complexity, fewer interoperability challenges, and greater efficiency and productivity.
“Orad has built an incredibly talented team of visionaries and product experts as well as a culture of customer success, and we are thrilled to have them as part of the Avid family,” said Louis Hernandez, Jr., chairman, president, and CEO of Avid. “Many of Avid’s and Orad’s solutions are already well integrated and widely used together by the world’s top media organizations, and we are working aggressively to bring all of Orad’s product lines into the Avid MediaCentral platform quickly. We look forward to keeping the community updated on our progress in the coming weeks and months.”
The transaction at today’s exchange rate translates to approximately $65 million net cash based on what Avid paid for each share of Orad common stock.
The combination of Avid and Orad is expected to deliver a number of significant benefits for customers of both companies, including:
Enhanced integration —Key Orad solutions are already integrated with products on the Avid MediaCentral Platform including graphics integrations with Avid iNEWS newsroom management and Media Composer, as well as video server support for ingest and playout with DNxHD. In the near future, customers should experience enhanced integration between more Avid and Orad solutions.
More comprehensive workflows — Tightly integrating Orad’s products into the Avid MediaCentral Platform is intended to provide media organizations with a more comprehensive, efficient set of on-air graphics and live production capabilities.
Improved efficiency — With less complexity and fewer interoperability challenges, media organizations can be more productive and operate more efficiently when more of their critical workflow solutions are integrated onto a single platform.
Complete choice with an open ecosystem — While the MediaCentral Platform will now include its own line of on-air graphics and live production solutions via Orad, customers will continue to enjoy complete choice over which solutions they want to use in their environments.
And more options for workflow management — Orad’s workflow management solutions are highly complementary to Avid’s asset and workflow management (MAM) solutions, and Avid is working to align the two product lines to provide a more comprehensive workflow management solution for customers of both product sets.
