Since its inception, Basemark has become one of the premier benchmark programs in the industry. Many of us in the business use it on a regular basis to test products. The software was owned by Rightware until recently, when Rightware's own CEO and founder, Tero Sarkkinen, bought out the Basemark IP and made his own company, appropriately called Basemark Ltd.
Sarkkinen couldn't disclose the specifics of the terms -- just that it was a seven-figure deal. Considering the current focus of Rightware, buying Basemark from the company was probably for the best.
"I founded rightware [sic] 5 years ago and they are on a phenomenal growth track with their user interface solution called Kanzi UI," he wrote in an email. "They have huge amounts of car manufacturers such as Audi using their solution to create all the advanced digital instrument clusters and other displays in cars. Given this success, the benchmark business started to be a little bit out of the focus and there was a risk of underinvesting in benchmarks because the user interface business started to take nearly all of the attention of the management."
With the priority of benchmarking slowly dwindling down the chain at Rightware, Sarkkinen soon felt that the only way for Basemark to succeed was to exist as a separate company. He said that the executive board of Rightware actually approached him with the idea of buying out Basemark.
Sarkkinen was the obvious choice to head the new company because of his 15 years of experience in the benchmarking business. The first 10 years was with Futuremark, where he rose up the ranks to become CEO. For the last five years, he served as the initial CEO and founder of Rightware.
For the most part, the new company will still provide the same services as when it was under Rightware. Consumers will still have access to the same benchmarking programs for their Android, iOS or Windows Phone devices, while professionals and media outlets get the full suite of benchmarking software.
However, that doesn't mean that Basemark isn't expanding its clientele. The company is working to provide benchmarks in the wearables market and also expand to new graphics APIs such as Metal, Khronos, and DirectX 12.
Basemark is also looking to create a universal power consumption measurement tool. The goal is to create a standard for measuring power consumption that manufacturers will use in order to create more efficient products that last longer without generating too much heat.
For now, Basemark will continue to provide the same services as before. The only difference is that instead of being a division of Rightware, it's an entirely separate company. But it's the long-term that could be interesting; now that Basemark is independent from Rightware, Sarkkinen and his team can focus solely on ways to not only improve the process of benchmarking, but also to expand it to new devices down the road.
Follow Rexly Peñaflorida II @Heirdeux. Follow us @tomshardware, on Facebook and on Google+.
