IT Industry News - December 2020

What happened last month in tech?

Overview

General Interest

Global Job Markets

Company News

Merger & Acquisition Activity

Overview

Five years ago, in December 2015, M&A was quiet but there was some interesting activity. The big deal saw Canadian telco Shaw make a big play into the cellular space with its proposed acquisition (subsequently approved) of Wind for $1.6 billion. Meanwhile, Rogers was also out shopping and growing its Maritimes presence through the acquisition of Internetworking Atlantic Inc. Other deals in December were not large but did feature some of the big players. Oracle bought Stackhouse, a cloud company with a specialization in "containers"; IBM boosted its video in the cloud capabilities with the purchase of Clearleap; and Microsoft picked up a mobile communications company, Talko. Other deals saw Ingram Micro buy the Odin Service Automation business from Parallels and in the storage world Carbonite bought Evault from Seagate.

Four years ago, in December 2016, Adecco sold its majority stake in Beeline VMS to GTRC, a private equity firm, for $100 million in cash plus a $30 million note; CRN solution provider SS&C purchased asset service firm Conifer for $88.5 million; solution provider QRX Technology Group acquired IT equipment provider Kerr Norton; networking solution provider, Juniper Networks acquired cloud operations management provider AppFormix; Uber bought start-up Geometric Intelligence Inc.; and Shopify acquired Tiny Hearts, a Toronto-based mobile product development studio.

December 2017 saw Atos enhance the footprint of their IT Services firm by paying $5 billion for Gemalto. Apple were busy, paying $400 million for music recognition app Shazam, plus they invested $390 million into optical communications components company Finisar. Finally, in a relatively quiet M&A month, Ingram Micro increased its data protection capability through the purchase of Cloud Harmonics.

Two years ago, in December 2018, IBM sold off a portion of their software portfolio to HCL for $1.8 billion. Cisco paid $660 million for optical chip company, Luxtera; and OpenText paid $310 million for data management company Liaison Technologies. In other deals, Google bought "where is my train" app company, Sigmoid Labs; Corel bought desktop virtualization company Parallels; Trello bought Butler, whose product is a popular addition for Trello users; Kaseya bought IT documentation company IT Glue; and GE continued its restructuring efforts by spinning out its IoT subsidiary and selling its interest in Pivotal. Finally, the end of December was the beginning of Dell’s return as a public company.

Last year, December 2019 saw some big dollar deals in the M&A world with the biggest seeing LogMeIn sold to private equity for $4.3 billion. Intel shelled out $2 billion for AI chip company Habana Labs; and F5 Networks paid $1 billion for Shape Security. In other deals, Solarwinds paid $175 million for VividCortex; NTT picked up AWS company Flux7; Fortinet bought Cybersponse; CheckPoint Software bought security company Protego; Acronis bought security company 5nine and Opswat bought cyber security company Impulse.

Which brings us back to the present

In December 2020, the pandemic continues to dominate news, and with vaccines approved and beginning to roll out there is cause for some optimism but that is going to take time. Meanwhile, increasing spread and mutated strains of the virus are causing concerns. When coupled with the current political upheaval in the US, small positive economic and job data indicators are not great indicators of where the economy really stands. Lockdowns are only going to continue and the impact on small businesses continues to be devastating. It remains to be seen what happens in the US and what the fallout will be on the markets and the economy in general.

It was an active month in M&A and some very big deals were announced. The $27.7 billion acquisition of collaboration software company Slack, by Salesforce, was certainly an eye opener; Platinum Equity paid $7.2 billion for Ingram Micro; self-driving startup Aurora is paying reputedly $4 billion for Uber’s Advanced Tech Group; and Google is reputedly paying $1 billion for data protection company Actifio.

There were a lot more deals too. Hyundai’s robotics arm paid $921 million for Boston Dynamics, owner of Spot, the robot; Cisco bought two companies, paying $730 million for contact center as a service company IMImobile and also picking up audience interaction tech company Slido; NortonLifeLock paid $360 million for cybersecurity company Avira; and, Facebook is buying customer relationship management company Kustomer.

There were some other big names out buying, including ServiceNow picking up Canadian darling AI company Element AI; IBM bought another Canadian company in the Fintech space, Expertus; Juniper Networks bought a startup, in the network space, Apstra ; Fortinet bought network tools company Panopta; RingCentral picked up AI comms company DeepAffects; Storage company Quantum bought media storage company Square Box Systems; and Goldman Sachs bought fraud detection system White Ops.

Cybersecurity continues to a be big news, with McAfee suggesting losses from cyber crime in 2020 were $945 billion, doubling the amount in just two years. The breach of FireEye by a "state sponsored" hacker does little to help, given this was essentially a case of the best of the best being breached!

General Interest

Global Job Markets

Company News

Merger & Acquisition Activity

Google Buying Actifio

Google is planning to acquire cloud-focused data protection technology developer Actifio in a move to better protect enterprise workloads both on-premises and in the cloud. No value was given for the acquisition. Actifio is a privately held company that has raised over $350 million in venture funding from such investors as Andreessen Horowitz and Tiger Global Management. The company has been valued at more than $1 billion.

Facebook Buying Kustomer

Facebook will acquire Kustomer, a New York-based customer relationship management startup, for an undisclosed amount. When the deal closes, Facebook says it will natively integrate Kustomer’s tools with its messaging platforms, including WhatsApp and Messenger, to allow businesses and partners to better manage their communications with users.

ServiceNow Buying Canadian Darling Element AI

After launching in 2016, raising US$102 million in Series A funding and opening offices across five cities in North America, Europe, and Asia, one of Canada’s superstar startups has been scooped up by American software giant ServiceNow. Element AI founder and chief executive officer Jean-Francois Gagné reiterated the company’s vision, noting its aim was to build and provision AI-based IT services for enterprises, many of which were not technology companies by nature.

Salesforce Paying $27.7 Billion for Slack Technologies

Cloud CRM application giant Saleforce will acquire Slack Technologies, developer of the popular Slack online collaboration service, for $27.7 billion. The acquisition sets up a competitive collision between Salesforce and Microsoft, whose own Teams collaboration software has gained huge market traction and user adoption this year.

Juniper Networks Buying Apstra

Juniper Networks is buying Apstra, an intent-based networking startup. Apstra’s technology will help Juniper build on its plans to inject AI all over the network for greater automation, specifically in the data center.

NortonLifeLock Buying Avira for $360 million

NortonLifeLock has agreed to purchase Avira from Investcorp for $360 million to strengthen its consumer cybersecurity and privacy offerings in Europe and other emerging markets.

Cisco Buying Two Companies: IMImobile ($730 million) and Slido

Tech giant Cisco Systems is doubling down on collaboration with the announcement of two new acquisition targets that will make its Webex and cloud-based contact center platform more insightful. Cisco is buying London-based contact center-as-a-service (CCaaS) firm IMImobile PLC for approximately $730 million, and Slido, an audience interaction technology specialist, for an undisclosed sum.

Aurora Buying Uber’s Advanced Technologies Group

Self-driving car startup Aurora is acquiring Uber’s Advanced Technologies Group, the ride-hailing company’s driverless vehicle division, for an undisclosed amount, but rumoured to be around $4 billion.

Fortinet Buys Panopta

Fortinet has purchased Panopta to gain visibility into and automate management of enterprise network components like servers, containers, applications, databases, virtual appliances and cloud infrastructure. The acquisition of Chicago-based Panopta will provide customers with a full picture of every service, network device and application in any deployment regardless of whether it’s on-premises, in the cloud, in a container or in a hybrid environment.

Platinum Equity Partners Buys Ingram Micro for $7.2 billion

Ingram Micro will be purchased by Los Angeles-based private equity firm Platinum Equity Partners for $7.2 billion. The deal ends four years of ownership by HNA Group, a massive Chinese air carrier that embarked on a heavily leveraged acquisition binge that has since hobbled its growth and forced it to divest property as it struggles to make payments on its debt. HNA told Chinese regulators in May that it missed a $750 million payment on a $4 billion loan that was used to buy Ingram Micro.

Hyundai Pays $921 Million for Boston Dynamics

Automaker Hyundai has acquired Boston Dynamics, a robotics company, for US$921 million. Hyundai may be known for its automobiles, but it also has an entire wing dedicated to robotics. Hyundai Robotics focuses on factory robotics and automation systems. Boston Dynamics was created at MIT in 1998. The company rose to fame with its wacky robots performing stunts on YouTube and, more recently, its Spot robot. Spot is a sensing robot designed to scale a variety of terrain. It can be outfitted for healthcare, utilities, and public safety purposes.

Quantum Buys Square Box Systems

Data storage and management vendor Quantum has acquired Square Box Systems, developer of the CatDV media management and workflow automation technology, and plans to combine both companies’ technologies into a more complete offering targeting video, audio, and other large data sets.

IBM Buys Expertus

IBM has acquired Expertus Technologies Inc., a Montreal-based fintech company. Expertus, a financial technology firm that processes more than $50 billion in transactions per day, will be added to the IBM Global Business Services unit.

MessageBird Buys Pusher for $35 Million

Cloud communications company MessageBird has acquired Pusher in a deal worth $35 million. Pusher enables developers to integrate real-time functionalities into their software, including push notifications and in-app messaging.

RingCentral Buys DeepAffects

RingCentral, a company that creates cloud-based communication and collaboration tools for the enterprise, has acquired conversational AI intelligence startup DeepAffects.

Cloudflare Buys Linc

Cloudflare has bought Linc, an automation platform to help front-end developers collaborate and build apps.

Kenshoo Buys Signals Analytics

Kenshoo, provider of a platform for managing marketing campaigns, is buying Signals Analytics, which offers a service for collecting unstructured consumer data that allows marketers to model campaigns using AI technologies.

Goldman Sachs Buys White Pps

White Ops, a fraud detection platform that protects enterprises and online platforms from automated attacks, announced it has been acquired by Goldman Sachs’ merchant banking division, in partnership with ClearSky Security and NightDragon. Founded in 2012, New York-based White Ops uses threat intelligence and machine learning to detect malicious bots that impersonate human behavior.

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IT Industry News – December 2020

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