Pitney Bowes has announced that its Pitney Bowes Group 1 Software and Pitney Bowes MapInfo business units, acquired separately, will become a single software company.  The move is effective immediately, and the businesses will merge operations over the next several months.

Mike Hickey, currently president of Pitney Bowes MapInfo, will become president of the combined entity, which is called Pitney Bowes Software. Chris Baker, who has served as president of Group 1 Software during two years of strong growth, will be transitioning into a broader innovation role within Pitney Bowes after leading Group 1 Software through a transformation that created a structure for sustained customer and shareholder value.

"Merging the businesses is both a natural evolution and an exciting step forward for Pitney Bowes," said Leslie Abi-Karam, executive vice president and president, Document Messaging Technologies. "We have become a large, multifaceted and powerful software company in the past three years, and by combining our separate acquisitions into a single entity we can deliver even more effective solutions to the marketplace."

Pitney Bowes MapInfo specializes in location intelligence software, data and services.  Group 1 Software is a leader in enterprise data quality and data integration software, with a special focus on standardizing and enhancing customer address information.  Group 1 Software also has industry-leading document composition tools.

Abi-Karam cited three significant opportunities that open up as a result of the new business combination.  "First, we have a huge global opportunity to bring together our expertise in location intelligence and address verification to become the most comprehensive and accurate provider of consumer and business-to-business data for marketing or business transactions.  Second, our ability to integrate customer data with psychographic and demographic data creates a broad suite of marketing and decision-making tools for industry verticals, such as insurance, retail and government, where location information is critical.  Finally, we will create a single organization which can work with our Marketing Services business to enhance our current offerings to marketing executives at companies of all sizes."

Hickey is a 12-year veteran of Pitney Bowes MapInfo.  He served as the company's chief operating officer from 2002-2007 and was named president earlier this year.

"This step will benefit both companies and their customers by providing them the best of what both MapInfo and Group 1 Software have to offer," said Hickey. "The two companies have formed a close working relationship and this announcement is a very positive move for our respective customers and employees."