Deltek Interview

This blog was written by Michael Burns

On October 4, 2012 I interviewed Patrick Smith, Vice President, Corporate Marketing and Communications to find out what was happening at Deltek partly because Deltek will be acquired by a private equity investment firm, Thoma Bravo, LLC, in an all-cash transaction valued at approximately $1.1 billion. I wanted to know the reason for the acquisition and the impact on the management team and product roadmap. I was told that the company basically got a good offer and that it will be business as usual with a new owner. Prior to the acquisition, Deltek made significant investments in complementary products such as Maconomy, which has led to new business in North America for Maconomy and new business opportunities for Deltek Vision in Europe. Deltek continues to invest in its products and have announced a cloud version of their software. They have also new products in Beta including their Vision Project Navigator dashboard that runs on mobile devices. Patrick said that project managers often are not fond of Deltek software which more appeals to accounting types. Patrick thinks that project managers will be on board with Project Navigator. Deltek has also released a social networking system called Kona (http://www.kona.com/) which can be used by anyone for free for project team communication and collaboration. It sounds like Thoma Bravo made a good investment.