KITCHENER, - The PEER Group, Inc. announced that it has completed the purchase of Asyst Technologies’ software business. Asyst was the market leader in connectivity software products in the semiconductor, solar, MEMS and electronics industries. PEER Group will advance its equipment automation strategy by enhancing its product portfolio, adding more than 100 new customers, and providing a strong R&D pipeline of new equipment automation technologies.

For the past five years, PEER Group was the largest value-added reseller of Asyst’s connectivity products for a variety of tool, fab, and assembly automation solutions. They provided outsourced software engineering design and implementation of several of Asyst’s key product enhancements.

This experience will enable PEER Group to begin effective support of these newly acquired products immediately.

PEER Group’s flagship tool automation product, PEER Tool Orchestrator (PTO™), embeds either ConX300™ or NexEDA™ for connectivity. Semilab, a supplier of a broad range of metrology equipment for the semiconductor and photovoltaic (PV) industries, was an early adopter of PTO. “From the initial ConX integration into our first tool platform, we have received all of our technical support directly from PEER Group,” says Chris Moore, president of Semilab USA Ltd. “Software integration with our equipment controllers has always gone smoothly and our products are quickly accepted by the most advanced fabs and run reliably in production.”

PEER Group will assume all existing customer support contracts, even those that have been prepaid. “Short-term, we’re prepared and eager to help customers through this transition by fulfilling license orders and providing customer support,” says Mike Kropp, COO of PEER Group. “Long-term, we believe our focus solely on automation software will help us deliver highly productive equipment automation products and services to the semiconductor, solar, and related industries.”

This acquisition significantly expands PEER Group’s footprint into Asia, particularly the Japanese semiconductor equipment market, where Asyst enjoyed strong market share. “Our CCS Envoy™ test application has been used in Japan for more than 10 years,” explains Kropp. “Along with the newly acquired Asyst products, we’ll have more than 80% of Japanese OEMs as customers and are now in a position to make a positive impact on factory automation productivity on a global scale.”

“Initially, I chose to work with PEER Group because of their excellent software engineering, project management and customer service,” continues Moore. “Over the past few years, they have more than justified our faith in being one of their early adopters. PEER Group has become the global leader in tool automation software and test applications. The entire industry will benefit from PEER Group’s acquisition of the Asyst software product line, as well as their continued innovation and investment in the field.”