Press Release
GREENWICH, Conn. – February 27, 2006 - GREENWICH, Conn. - February 27, 2006 - HALO Technology Holdings, Inc. (OTCBB: HALO), an enterprise software holding company, today announced plans to merge its Tesseract and ECI subsidiaries into Empagio, HALO's premier human resources solutions provider. The closing of the ECI acquisition is scheduled for February 28, 2006. The combination of the subsidiaries will create a leader in the Human Resources Management Solutions (HRMS) industry, boasting an impressive roster of Fortune 1000 enterprise customers and more than two million lives under management. The merged company will be called Empagio and will be headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia.
The planned merger ushers in the second phase of HALO's overall strategy, which is to combine strong on-premises software solutions that serve an established customer base with a modern software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution. By offering on-premises and SaaS solutions under the same brand, Empagio is uniquely positioned to deliver long term support to existing customers while simultaneously providing a migration path to a best-of-breed SaaS solution. Specifically, Empagio is initiating HALO’s “lift and shift” strategy, providing on-premises customers with a clear path to the SaaS model, which will result in lower cost, higher quality, flexible HR solutions for companies of all sizes. The addition of ECI provides a true Human Resources Outsourcing (HRO) solution to existing customers.
"The merger of Tesseract, a well respected, world class HRMS provider, and Empagio, a business service centric hosted solution, provides customers with a seamless alternative to the complex and expensive offerings of some larger vendors,” said Charles W. Stevenson, HALO's chief technology officer. "It further reinforces the second stage of our strategy of acquiring proven and reliable mission-critical business solutions used by Fortune 1000 organizations and combining them to create a synergistic offering. As our critical first step into the software-as-a-service market, we're using Web Services and a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) to combine world-class solutions and provision them as SaaS, making them available not only to the enterprise, but also to mid-tier markets that previously could not afford solutions of this caliber."
“A lot of people have the idea of developing SaaS-type companies in a variety of enterprise software categories," said Ron Bienvenu, HALO's CEO. "The barrier to entry here is not the ability to write hosted software, but rather, getting people to trust you with mission critical applications. Our unique lift-and-shift strategy underscores our belief that long term customer relationships based on trust are more valuable than the ability to develop cool software. We see ourselves as partners with our customers and look to help them manage the transition to more modern technology platforms at a time and pace that is appropriate for their business model, not ours.”
”The Tesseract software is an amazingly robust, reliable payroll engine," said Randy Cooper, CEO of Empagio. "From customers as large as Home Depot down to customers with less than a thousand employees, the Tesseract software continues to deliver accurate and timely payroll processing for many on-premises enterprise customers. With Empagio’s SaaS delivery model, web-centric architecture, and HRO delivery capabilities, these same customers can now select from a variety of delivery models to find the one that best meets their corporate objectives and, through a single trusted vendor, can implement their desired transition strategy in a measured and timely manner.”
HALO Technology Holdings, Inc. is a global provider of a diversified range of standards-based enterprise software applications and on-demand solutions. HALO's strategy is to acquire and operate enterprise software companies with a commitment to sustainable growth. HALO portfolio companies focus on customer service, product quality and profitability to build long term customer relationships and ensure customer satisfaction today and into the future. Everyday, thousands of corporations and institutions from across the globe rely on our portfolio companies to deliver high quality, enterprise class software and services. For more information, please see our website at www.haloholdings.com.
Certain statements in this press release may constitute "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward-looking statements include those relating to future opportunities, the outlook of customers, the reception of new products and technologies, and the success of new initiatives. In particular, statements contained in this press release that concern future operating results or other statements using words such as “anticipate,” “believe,” “could,” “estimate,” “intend,” “may,” “plan,” “project,” “should” “will,” or “set our sights on” constitute forward-looking statements and are made under the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.In addition, such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from any future results expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such factors include: (i) demand for the Company's products; (ii) the actions of current and potential new competitors; (iii) changes in technology; (iv) the nature and amount of the Company's revenues and expenses; and (v) overall economic conditions and other risks detailed from time to time in the Company's periodic earnings releases and reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the "Commission"), as well as the risks and uncertainties discussed in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-KSB filed with the Commission on September 28, 2005 (the "Form 10-KSB") and the Company's Quarterly Reports on Form 10-QSB filed with the Commission on November 14, 2005 and on February 15, 2006.