KVH Industries completed the $6.5 million all-cash acquisition of Virtek Communication AS, the company announced.

Norway-based Virtek specializes in the development and deployment of software known as "middleware" that helps commercial fleets and vessel owners manage the data transmitted to and from their vessels over satellite communications services, such as KVH's mini-VSAT Broadband and Inmarsat FleetBroadband.

"In order to provide the highest-quality maritime VSAT service available, we recognized that our end-to-end solution would be improved if we were able to optimize the data transmitted over the network while providing an array of versatile on-board applications specially designed to work well in the maritime environment," said Martin Kits van Heyningen, CEO of KVH, in a statement.

"We spent more than a year evaluating all of the middleware solutions on the market and found Virtek offered exactly the types of advanced features that we wanted to provide our mini-VSAT Broadband customers," he added.

Middletown, R.I.-based KVH Industries, and its wholly owned subsidiaries, are leading providers of in-motion satellite TV and communications systems.