Newspaper systems vendors DTI and Saxotech have announced that they are getting together to form a new company with private equity support.

The merger – to form Newscycle Solutions – is immediate, and brings together a ‘blended’ senior management team and a cluster of 3000 customers in 25 countries.

A statement says the creation of Newscycle was driven by the simultaneous acquisitions of DTI and Saxotech by Vista Equity Partners, a private equity firm focussed on long-term value-added investments in software and technology-enabled services.

Dan Paulus, former president of DTI, becomes president of Newscycle, with Anders Christiansen, former chief executive of Saxotech, becoming chief operation officer. Don Oldham, founder and former chief executive of DTI, will be a board advisor, and the company says its management team includes other executives from the two companies as well as new members.

The merger expands its global presence with offices in nine countries and sales and support personnel located around the world. DTI recently closed its Asia Pacific office in Sydney – although Australia is listed in the new company’s press release – while Saxotech had largely withdrawn from the presence created when it was represented by the Hannan Group and had its Sydney suburban newspapers – now owned by News Corp Australia – as a client.

Newscycle claims the “scale and ability to serve publishers across all geographies with solutions for content, advertising, circulation and audience relationship management”. Product innovation cycles are expected to accelerate as a result of direct collaboration on digital publishing and cloud computing.

Paulus describes the merger as a “rare and exciting opportunity” to bring together the talents and technologies of the two companies: “DTI and Saxotech share mutual respect for each other and possess a combined history of 50 years of serving publishers throughout the world with innovative and customer-centric solutions,” he says. “Our customers will benefit from access to a wider array of applications and a deeper roster of experienced people to support their accelerating business needs.”

Christiansen says the two are “better together because we will offer the broadest range of publishing solutions and will have expanded resources to support current products and to deliver the next generation of solutions that publishers need to compete”.

He says the two complement each other geographically, making Newscycle “instantly competitive as a global player”.

Newscycle says it has US offices in Florida, Maryland, Minnesota and Utah, plus international offices in Australia, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Norway, Panama, Sweden and the UK. US-based Vista has offices in San Francisco, Chicago and Austin, and currently invests about $7 billion.