Motorola Solutions Pays $455 Million for Fort Worth License Plate-recognition Firm

A Fort Worth-based company that provides license plate-recognition software and other tech-based solutions used by public safety and commercial clients has been bought by Motorola Solutions in a $445 million cash and stock deal.VaaS International Holdings will become part of Chicago-based Motorola Solutions, which sells software and devices for mission-critical communications for government agencies, law enforcement and enterprises. The company spun off from mobile phone-focused Motorola in 2011.Motorola Solutions has 16,000 employees, with about 2,000 in its software group. With the acquisition, it will nearly double its North Texas workforce. It has about 100 employees in Plano. VaaS has nearly 100 in Fort Worth.Andrew Sinclair, who leads Motorola Solutions' software division, said the company wanted to buy VaaS because of its valuable data, advanced machine learning and video analytics and similar mission. He said it'll add to the company's public safety portfolio."A data platform is only as valuable as the data in it," he said. "We see this technology over time saving people's lives because the time to respond is critical and efficiency is critical."  Continue reading...