Harte Hanks Sells Data Quality Firm Trillium for $112m

US-based direct marketing and targeting giant Harte Hanks has sold its data quality business Trillium Software to big data firm Syncsort for $112m in cash. Harte Hanks says the deal will enable it to focus on its core strengths of marketing strategy, analytics, and execution capabilities.

Trillium provides enterprise data profiling, data cleansing, enrichment, and data linking software and services for use in data-driven marketing campaigns, customer experiences, CRM operations, business intelligence and analytics, and data governance. Syncsort says the acquisition will meet the needs of both firms' clients seeking to generate new insights by combining traditional corporate data with new information sources from mobile, online, social and the Internet of Things.

Harte Hanks CEO Karen Puckett says the sale, along with the cost reductions her firm implemented earlier in the year, will provide the company with a stronger balance sheet, with the net proceeds being used to retire an outstanding credit facility. Josh Rogers (pictured), Syncsort CEO, adds: 'As a pioneer in bringing high-performance data integration software to the Hadoop ecosystem, Syncsort sees an opportunity to extend our unique value with Trillium's proven, best-of-breed data quality products. Together, we are a clear leader in the data integration and data quality market, and the logical choice for large enterprises seeking to chart a path to Hadoop'.

Web sites: www.hartehanks.com , www.trilliumsoftware.com and www.syncsort.com .