Company competes in the SMB applications market GoldMine maker FrontRange Ltd. is about to go private, as Menlo Park, California, investment firm Francisco Partners agreed Friday to acquire all of FrontRange’s outstanding shares off the South African JSE Ltd. exchange. FrontRange valued the deal, expected to close within 90 days, at around $200 million.FrontRange competes in the SMB (small and medium business) applications market, with a portfolio that includes CRM (customer relationship management) software GoldMine and the Heat service and support applications line, as well as infrastructure and communication management software. The South African company had revenue of $66.7 million and income of $6.8 million for the 10-month fiscal year it ended in April. (FrontRange shifted the end of its fiscal year from June to April, creating a shorter fiscal year in 2005.) FrontRange runs a U.S. subsidiary with headquarters in Dublin, California.Under its new ownership, FrontRange will continue aggressively seeking growth in the midmarket, Chief Executive Officer Michael McCloskey said. That segment has been the most active part of the enterprise applications market in recent years, as midmarket vendors like Salesforce.com Inc. and Sage Software Inc. work to spread the CRM and ERP (enterprise resource planning) gospel through small businesses. Enterprise vendors like SAG AG and Oracle Corp. are tweaking their own SMB strategies, looking to compete in less-saturated markets as sales slow among large enterprises. Software Development