Inovis announced the acquisition of BetweenMarkets today. Financial terms weren’t disclosed, as is typical with two privately held companies. Inovis seems to be on a roll, having recently announced a deal with Small World Labs. The history of BetweenMarkets is a long and winding road. Despite the tie to Georgia, BetweenMarkets has an office in Austin and grew up here in it’s early days.

SupportMinds and Spiceworks announced a deal today in which SupperMinds will license and re-brand the SpiceWorks IT desktop tools for SupportMinds customers. Looks like SpiceWorks just opened up a whole new revenue stream in addition to their ad-supported model. SupportMinds provides IT helpdesk services to small businesses in the U.S. and Canada.

Jay Hallberg, co-founder and vice president of marketing for Spiceworks said: "Like Supportminds, Spiceworks is focused on making IT management easier for small businesses everywhere. Our combined service offerings will provide a powerful support and management solution that will help thousands of small business networks operate more smoothly and efficiently."

Yes, that is $1.4 billion with a "B" for EqualLogic. EqualLogic is a New Hampshire-based provider of iScsi SAN storage devices. You can look forward to EqualLogic’s storage technology to start finding it’s way into Dell’s PowerVault storage lineup. EqualLogic registered for an IPO back in August, and it appeared they had a run rate of about $100M per year in revenue. In a very crowded storage market EqualLogic seems to have risen above the crowd, bolstered by some good management, crisp execution, and venture money. The company’s last round was in 2004 from CRV, Sigma Partners, Focus Ventures, and TD Capital. At the time their post money valuation was reported to be under $100M. Now this is being hailed as the largest all-cash exit ever for a VC-backed company. This deal will definitely kick up the fund ROI for Charles River and Sigma Partners.

Two Austin companies filing for IPO’s on the same day?  Well, you’re in luck today.

In addition to the CreditCards.com IPO, Capstar Acquisition Corp. has filed a $230 million IPO.  The Company is lead by radio industry superstar Steven Hicks, who previously founded and led Capstar Broadcasting to an IPO in 1998 before merging that company into AMFM.com in a stock swap valued at $4.1 billion.  Hicks also serves as chairman of HealthTronics, Inc.

Capstar Acquisition is being held out as what is know as a "blank check" company, formed to buy or merge companies in the media and entertainment industries.  James Huffines, chairman of The University of Texas System Board of Regents, Frederick Kraegel, a senior consultant with Bridge Associates LLC, and Timothy Lindgren, senior vice president for Hyatt Hotels & Resorts, have all been nominated to join Capstar Acquisition Corp.’s Board after the IPO.

Given the past success of Steven Hicks, and the team assembled by Capstar Acquisition, expect this company to quickly find big success!

Austin-based CreditCards.com disclosed the terms of their Initial Public Offering (IPO) today. The company is basically a demand generation website for credit card issuers. They plan to issue approximately 10.7 million shares of stock at an offering price of $13-$15 per share. The company could raise approximately $100M in funds from this offering, led by Credit Suisse, and followed by Citigroup, BMO, and Thomas Weisel.

Austin Ventures recapitalized the company toward the end of last year. Holding pre-IPO positions are Austin Ventures (65.6%), American Capital Strategies (9.6%) and company founder Dan Smith (16.1%). A group of stockholders are selling about $32M in shares in the offering.