Actian Corp., and Pervasive Software Inc. today announced that the two companies have entered into a definitive merger agreement pursuant to which Actian will acquire all of Pervasive’s outstanding shares for $9.20 per share. The deal values Pervasive at $161.9m.

“Big data is an opportunity and a challenge for organizations in every industry, with potentially valuable business critical insight locked away in inaccessible and indecipherable systems. This makes data management and insight today’s big question for businesses looking at how to unlock the substantial incremental business value in their big data,” said Steve Shine, CEO & president of Actian Corporation. ”

“There is a lot of industry discussion around the big data challenge. This debate essentially boils down to how organizations extract business value from data in a way that is powerful yet simple,” Shine continued. “We want to give customers the tools to get to the data, find those nuggets of insight and act on it immediately. Would an e-tailer benefit from knowing the social preferences for those in his on-line store or from real-time alerts from a price comparison site for items in stock? The Actian and Pervasive merger allows us to bring this and countless other data driven benefits to the market in a way that enables every business to create compelling business outcomes from the promise of big data.”

This merger gives all customers access to a larger portfolio of products, and provides joint partners greater opportunity to offer new solutions in adjacent markets.

Actian’s Vectorwise currently holds multiple records for performance and is fast becoming the analytic platform of choice for digital companies around the world, which can now be combined with Pervasive Big Data and Analytics software. Shrine expects this transaction will enable both companies to out-innovatio and out-perform industry giants and increase access to big data platforms.

“Together, the combined group has the technology and global presence to deliver the ability to extract, analyze and take action on big data in real time,” concluded Shine.

Actian's exclusive financial advisor was Evercore Partners and its legal counsel was Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP. Financing for this transaction will be provided by TPG Lending Company.