Sebastopol’s Webvanta acquired by Xfive of Australia

Webvanta, a Sebastopol company that specializes in web development for education, has been acquired by Australia-based web developer Xfive.

The acquisition comes a month after the death of one of the local company’s founders. Michael Slater died June 19 of cancer at age 60 in Sebastopol.

“Webvanta brings new expertise and passions which complement Xfive and vice-versa,” Xfive founder Dave Rosen said in a statement Tuesday. “Going forward, Xfive and Webvanta united presents a lot of new possibilities.”

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Slater and Christopher Haupt founded Webvanta in 2007. The company’s clients included UC Berkeley, UCSF and Sonoma State University.

Rosen established Xfive, then named XHTMLized, a decade ago in Melbourne, Australia. The company has 50 employees worldwide, including at a development and operational center in Kraków, Poland.

Robert Digitale