Accelrys, the laboratory software provider, has acquired Ireland-based Qumas for approximately $50 million. Qumas specialises in cloud-based and on-premises enterprise compliance software, that supports regulatory and quality-control testing in life sciences and other regulated industries.
It is the latest acquisition for Accelrys, which is based in San Diego, following Velquest (January 2012), Aegis (October 2012), Vialis (January 2013) and ChemSW (September 2013).
Qumas provides an electronic document management system, with related packages covering R&D submissions and QA documentation based on customer and industry requirements and best practices. The business process management applications include CAPA (corrective action/preventive action), audit, change control, deviation, complaint and other critical process packages offering pre-defined and pre-tested software.
Max Carnecchia, president and CEO of Accelrys, said: 'Integrating Qumas solutions into the Accelrys product portfolio will provide a single-vendor SILM solution for product lifecycle management into the critical compliance and quality management arena for science-based process industries.'
Alan Louie, research director at IDC Health Insights, commented: 'While discovery research remains largely unregulated, it’s clear that the lines across the entire life science value chain are blurring. As a result, companies are increasingly seeking solutions that allow them to manage new product development more holistically, ensuring that compliance and quality is consistent across the entire product lifecycle. This is becoming a differentiator for organizations seeking to bring innovative new products to market faster and more efficiently, especially as translational efforts become increasingly the norm.'
Research, laboratory, and manufacturing informatics applications such as the Accelrys ELN (Electronic Lab Notebook), Accelrys LIMS (Laboratory Information Management System), Accelrys LES (Lab Execution System) and Accelrys Discoverant for Operational Intelligence, will function as data sources for the compliance and quality business systems managed by Qumas. Available as SaaS (Software as a Service), private cloud, or on-premises deployments, the software scales to thousands of users and millions of documents.
