Baltimore Technologies has signed an agreement to acquire a Canadian-based software development company, Nevex Software Technologies, in an all-stock deal worth about £29 million sterling (€48 million).

The acquisition will give Baltimore access to Nevex's core product which uses Internet-based secure access and authorisation management technology to enable companies to manage security access on their networks.

Baltimore should also retain the services of Nevex's staff of 20 experienced software engineers who will be locked into the company through the deal which includes a four-year stock-options plan.

Mr Fran Rooney, chief executive of Baltimore, said the company would rebrand Nevex's core product range, and release it on the market before the end of this quarter. He said the acquisition of Nevex, coupled with Baltimore's recent acquisition of Content Technologies, would enable the company to provide customers with a unified infrastructure for information asset management.

"The technology we acquired through Content Technologies enables us to protect companies from threats to information sent over the Internet while Nevex's technology allows us to catalogue information by crawling through every part of a network," he said.

Analysts are predicting that Nevex's security management product will generate revenues of $15 million (€17 million) over the next year and therefore will not hit Baltimore's earnings before interest tax and amortisation.

Mr Barry Dixon, an analyst with Davy's Stockbrokers said it looked like a good deal and would fit Baltimore's ongoing strategy of offering a seamless security solution to its clients.

This is the fifth Baltimore acquisition to date this year and will enable it to enter the fast growing policy driven and authorisation management segment of the e-security market.

Mr Rooney said Baltimore now had a complete solution for the IT and corporate sector of the e-security marketplace. However, he said the company was still looking at opportunities in the personal digital assistant and appliances sector, digital rights management and order, billing and payroll sectors.

The deal to acquire Nevex is expected to be closed later this month. Nevex, which is based in Toronto, Canada, was founded in 1999 by the team of engineers which launched one of the first commercially available firewalls at Border Network Technologies.

Baltimore share price fell 16.5p sterling to 675p on the FTSE but was up 3.27 per cent at $19.75 following announcement of the deal on the Nasdaq.