Having worked with Vizrt for the last five years, systems developer CCI is to buy Escenic from its partner.

Escenic’s multichannel publishing customers include News International, Telegraph Media Group, Trinity Mirror, Schibsted, De Telegraaf, Swedish TV, Axel Springer and The Hindu. Most recently, CCI’s NewsGate editorial and Escenic’s online solution were integrated at McClatchy in the USA.

Vizrt and CCI have also agreed that CCI will sell and implement the VME video solution.

The definitive agreement sees CCI Europe buy all of Escenic in three tranches: It will pay US$2 million for a 51 per cent share, and then the remainder in two payments of up to $1 million each (based on turnover) at the end of this year and 2014.

Vizrt says it expects to lose $500,000 on the deal.

CCI and Vizrt have been strategic partners for the past six years, and have signed an agreement that allows Vizrt to continue selling Escenic products as an integral part of its overall solutions offering.

Escenic, based in Oslo with a subsidiary in Bangladesh, has a total of 58 employees, and was acquired by Vizrt in 2008.

CCI chief executive Dan Korsgaard says the acquisition is “the perfect match and a natural next step” in the close cooperation between the companies: “It adds a tremendous amount of domain expertise to all of us.”

CCI says it will continue to offer Escenic as a standalone system to those customers who want that. “Both companies are committed to ensure that current and potential Escenic and Vizrt customers will continue to receive the highest level of service,” says Vizrt chief executive Martin Burkhalter.

Escenic’s multichannel and mobile-ready solution includes a web content management system, the Widget Framework.

Vizrt builds real-time 3D graphics and asset management tools for the broadcast industry, with users including newspaper publishers The Globe and Mail, Times Online, The Telegraph, and Welt Online as well as CNN, CBS, Fox, the BBC, BSkyB, Al Jazeera and ITN.