Category Archives: M&A

cloud video, IBM, M&A, News & Analysis, Ustream

IBM buys streaming service Ustream to boost its cloud video portfolio

IBM2IBM has announced another cloud video acquisition with the intention to purchase video streaming service provider Ustream. The new acquisition will become part of IBM’s Cloud offering to enterprises. Financial details were not disclosed.

Ustream has developed a cloud model to support live and on-demand video streams. It currently has 80 million viewers per month from customers including NASA, Samsung, Facebook, Nike and The Discovery Channel. It has a San Francisco base and a development office in Budapest, Hungary with data centres in California, Amsterdam and Tokyo.

The newly-formed IBM Cloud Video Services unit is now comprised of IBM’s R&D labs and acquisitions such as Clearleap, Ustream, Aspera and Cleversafe, as well as its own R&D inventions.

In December BCN reported how IBM had bought video service provider Clearleap which aims to create APIs for every type of device on which video can be watched. The unit will offer video services including open API development, digital and visual analytics, management and a promise of consistent delivery across global industries.

In addition IBM’s R&D has led to 1,000 patents of its own in areas such as visual analytics and indexing and searching large collections of videos and digital images.

The foundation of the Ustream portfolio is the open Ustream Development Platform which helps clients to create custom video apps to run video on any device and embed video into any application. IBM will integrate Ustream’s development platform into Bluemix to allow clients to provide distinct video services to developers.

The Ustream portfolio includes Ustream Demand, which lets marketers collect and automate leads into marketing workflows and Ustream Align, for secure internal employee communications. Ustream Pro Broadcasting offers large scale live video streaming.

Unit General Manager Braxton Jarratt said IBM estimates there is a target market for cloud-based video services and software worth a potential $105 billion, because companies now communicate with customers and employees through video, webcasts, conference keynotes, training and customer care. Since video is expensive to manage and provide, Upstream’s understanding of how cloud computing can help rationalise costs is invaluable, according to Upstream CEO Brad Hunstable. “We’ve built a video platform that is easy-to-use, yet incredibly scalable and powerful. It is these qualities that made us an ideal addition to IBM’s portfolio,” said Hunstable.

acquisition, CRM, M&A, News & Analysis, Outbox, PwC

PWC buys CRM and sales automation specialist Outbox

PwC is to acquire technology consultant Poland-based Outbox Group, a cloud-based CRM and sales automation specialist.

The addition of 250 employees from Outbox, a partner of Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, Oracle and SAP, will raise PWC’s headcount of technology specialists to almost 3,000 across EMEA. The acquisition agreement, signed on 31 December 2015, is expected to formally complete by January 31 2016.

Formed in 2005, Outbox provides consultancy over CRM, customer experience and marketing automation to 150 customers including Sky, Vodafone and Inmarsat. The Warsaw-based consultancy has now completed 250 CRM projects and has international offices in the UK, Germany, France and the Czech Republic.

The potential market for customer experience, CRM and digital is estimated at €6 billion according to PwC’s UK and EMEA Consulting Leader, Ashley Unwin. “This acquisition represents an investment in emerging markets and establishes centre of excellence for customer and digital capabilities within PwC in Europe,” said Unwin.

UK-based Outbox managing director Nicholas Mobbs will join PwC as a partner. “We are excited to join a leading consulting brand and combine business advice with user experience, marketing automation and CRM skills and services,” said Mobbs.

In other PWC news, cloud computing is contributing to a confidence crisis among enterprise chief executives, according to PWC’s global chairman Dennis Nally. Speaking at the 2016 Davos World Economic Forum, Nally said the cloud-based integrated global economy means that the world’s hot spots can instantly transmit end to end instability across the world.

Quoting the results of PwC’s 19th Annual Global CEO Survey, Nally said there were two outstanding sentiments among the survey group of 1,409 CEOs in 83 countries. The global economy and geopolitical tensions, the top two concerns, are interlinked now that technology acts as a lightning rod between hot spots, according to Nally. “We all know how integrated the global economy really is and not looking good is how I’d put it,” Nally told CNBC.

Accelerite, Citrix, hybrid cloud, M&A, News & Analysis

Citrix to sell CloudPlatform and CloudPortal to Accelerite, improve XenApp

CitrixCitrix has announced it will sell its CloudPlatform and CloudPortal Business Manager systems to infrastructure software vendor Accelerite. The acquisition is expected to close in Q1 2016, subject to conditions.

Accelerite, a subsidiary of Persistent Systems, has recently acquired cloud and virtualisation product lines from HP, Intel and Openwave. Citrix will work with Accelerite to build on CloudPlatform integrations with XenServer, NetScaler and Citrix Workspace Cloud.

The Apache-based CloudPlatform is used to create and run public and private cloud infrastructure services. CloudPortal Business Manager automates provisioning, billing, metering and user management. Its strength is that it allows service providers to deliver a range of cloud services while integrating with existing business, operations and IT systems, according to Nara Rajagopalan, CEO of Accelerite,

The new additions give Accelerite a more complete portfolio and it can now fill the gap in end-to-end life cycle management for public and private clouds, it said. Despite the increasing adoption of container technology in the cloud industry many enterprises cannot deploy and manage them. CloudPlatform’s simplicity and large customer base provide a means of addressing this emerging shortfall as the industry evolves into hyper-convergence, Rajagopalan said in a statement.

“Citrix will work closely with Accelerite to build on CloudPlatform integrations with our key offerings that enable the secure delivery of apps and data,” said Steve Wilson, the VP of Core Infrastructure at Citrix.

Citrix will continue to work with both the OpenStack and CloudStack open source communities to optimise its NetScaler, XenServer and Citrix Workspace Cloud.

Meanwhile, at the Citrix Summit 2016 in Las Vegas Citrix announced that new releases of XenApp and XenDesktop are available for download. The new 7.7 XenDesktop release is a product of collaboration between Citrix and Microsoft and it promises new cloud provisioning and collaboration options. The new versions will improve the flexibility of the FlexCast Management Architecture (FMA) across multiple geographical locations, Citrix claims.

Among the promised improvements are a fully native Skype for Business user experience within a virtual app or desktop, as well as high-quality voice and video. The new versions will make it easier to set up virtual desktops in Microsoft Azure by using the Machine Creation Services (MCS) feature of XenApp and XenDesktop. Citrix Provisioning Services will also now supports the on-premises provisioning of Windows 10 virtual desktops, it claims.

Cloudability, DataHero, M&A, News & Analysis

Cloudability buys DataHero for more accurate cost analysis

M&AAccounting start-up Cloudability has acquired data visualisation service provider DataHero, another cloud start-up that formed at about the same time.

Oregon-based Cloudability’s growth came from helping companies track their spending on public cloud infrastructure. It announced the addition of San Francisco based DataHero on the company blog and hailed the extension of its presence 500 miles away in California.

However, while 12 of DataHero’s staff are to join Cloudability, its founder and CEO Chris Neumann will not join, neither will the company’s CFO, engineering VP or the VP for marketing. DataHero will continue to operate as normal for the foreseeable future until it can be integrated into the CloudAbility portfolio.

CloudAbility CEO Mat Ellis said the process will involve building a connector to make it easier for its clients to use DataHero to ingest different information streams, such as invoices from Zuora and conversions from Google Analytics, into Cloudability. The upshot, he said, is to help clients see what’s happening in their business and get a sense of the business costs that matter, such as the IT cost per new customer or the unit contribution margin after the cost of goods sold. The technology matters to cloud users because it helps companies save money on research and development as it brings them the best of both products in one service. “We both have an awesome dashboard which cost a lot of money to get right,” said Ellis. “Now there’s no need to do that twice.”

As the cloud makes it harder for managers to get a clear picture of their asset performances, the data visualisation market has entered a period of consolidation. Salesforce bought EdgeSpring, Zendesk bought BIME, Microsoft bought Datazen and Cloudability previously acquired DataPad. Cloudability has also acquired start ups in other areas such as CloudVertical, RipFog and Attribo.

DataHero had previously raised $10 million in venture funding, the latest award of $6.1 million being announced in May 2015.

“As companies spend more to run applications on public clouds, managing that cloud spending becomes increasingly urgent, difficult and risk prone,” wrote Ellis on his own blog. “Mastering the cloud at scale requires us to think about spending in a completely new way.”

Instead of asking macro economic questions about how much IT is costing every year, the new challenge is to provide micro-economic detail about the cost of every activity, he argued. “We should ask the cost of almost anything: each web page served, widget sold, ride taken across town or flight to the other side of the planet,” he said.

The cost of the DataHero acquisition was not released.

Cloud Foundry, CloudCredo, M&A, News & Analysis

Pivotal buys UK-based CloudCredo to acquire Cloud Foundry skills

M&ALondon-based Cloud Foundry services provider CloudCredo has been bought by San Francisco-based software vendor Pivotal, a VMware spin off company. The acquisition includes CloudCredo subsidiary stayUp, which specialises in log analysis.

The logic of the acquisition is that it will make it easier for enterprises to use the new Pivotal Cloud Foundry, according to Pivotal CEO Rob Mee.

CloudCredo will continue to operate from London and service its existing customers, but its new brief includes expanding Pivotal Cloud Foundry’s growth across the world. CloudCredo’s expertise will be applied to help enterprise customers understand how to use the Pivotal Cloud Foundry Cloud Native platform more quickly and fine tune their techniques for creating the appropriate software.

Cloud Foundry skills are at a premium, as there is a scant supply of IT experts in Europe with the necessary skills for providing open source platforms as a service (PaaS) according to analyst James Governor, founder of research company RedMonk. “The pool of Cloud Foundry systems talent in Europe is limited and service companies with a proven track record is even rarer,” he said.

CloudCredo has extensive knowledge of running Cloud Foundry for some of the world’s largest brands, according to Pivotal CEO Mee. “With this expertise, we can better help our customers adopt Pivotal’s Cloud Native platform more quickly,“ he said.

Joining Pivotal means that, overnight, CloudCredo can operate at a global scale, said its CEO Colin Humphreys.

M&A, NetDespatch, News & Analysis, Royal Mail, Software as a service

Royal Mail bags couriering SaaS specialist NetDespatch

Email DatentunnelThe UK’s Royal Mail has bought cloud-based parcel management system NetDespatch in a bid to expand its range of services and global reach.

NetDespatch will operate as an independent standalone subsidiary so it can continue to service existing clients and is free to offer services to Royal Mail competitors in future. NetDespatch directors Matthew Robertson and Matthew Clark will remain in charge of operations and all existing client terms and conditions will remain unchanged.

The service provider helps carriers (such as its new parent company Royal Mail) to manage the transport of parcels for 130,000 business customers in 100 countries across the world. The NetDespatch parcel management system is a software as a service (SaaS) cloud system that carriers use to track the movements of parcels. It has grown in popularity as it can make it easier to integrate ecommerce websites, sales order processing and warehouse systems at the point of despatch. It makes it easier for users to print shipping labels, customs documents and manifests and automatically pre-advises their carrier of incoming parcels.

The aim is to make a relatively complex process simple, make logistics more efficient and save money for everyone in the supply chain from retailer to carrier to consumer, said Matthew Robertson, NetDespatch’s Commercial Director. “E-commerce is exploding in the run up to Christmas and we expect to continue to steam ahead in 2016 and beyond,” he said.

NetDespatch’s cloud software has made the integration of the Royal Mail’s systems with its customers’ complex IT estates a lot quicker, according to Nick Landon, Managing Director of Royal Mail Parcels. “This acquisition will support our parcels business with new and innovative software solutions,” he said. The fee for the transaction was not disclosed.

Big Data, Database, M&A, Metanautix, Microsoft, News & Analysis

Microsoft acquires Metanautix with Quest for intelligent cloud

MicrosoftMicrosoft has bought Californian start up Metanautix for an undisclosed fee in a bid to improve the flow of analytics data as part of its ‘intelligent cloud’ strategy.

The Palo Alto vendor was launched by Theo Vassilakis and Toli Lerios in 2014 with $7 million. The Google and Facebook veterans had impressed venture capitalists with their plans for more penetrative analysis of disparate data. The strategy was to integrate the data supply chains of enterprises by building a data computing engine, Quest, that created scalable SQL access to any data.

Modern corporations aspire to data-driven strategies but have far too much information to deal with, according to Metanautix. With so many sources of data, only a fraction can be analysed, often because too many information silos are impervious to query tools.

Metanautix uses SQL, the most popular query language, to interrogate sources as diverse as data warehouses, open source data base, business systems and in-house/on-premise systems. The upshot is that all data is equally accessible, whether it’s from Salesforce or SQL Server, Teradata or MongoDB.

“As someone who has led complex, large scale data warehousing projects myself, I am excited about building the intelligent cloud and helping to realize the full value of data,” said Joseph Sirosh, corporate VP of Microsoft’s  Data Group, announcing the take-over on the company web site.

Metanautix’s technology, which promises to connect to all data regardless of type, size or location, will no longer be available as a branded product or service. Microsoft is to initially integrate it within its SQL Server and Cortana Analytics systems with details of integration with the rest of Microsoft’s service portfolio to be announced in later months, Sirosh said.

The blog posting from Metanautix CEO Theo Vassilakis hinted at further developments. “We look forward to being part of Microsoft’s important efforts with Azure and SQL Server to give enterprise customers a unified view of all of their data across cloud and on-premises systems,” he said.

acquisition, Dell, EMC, M&A, News & Analysis, VMware

Dell EMC takeover raises questions about Virtustream and Perot Systems

Dell office logoTwo new developments have been reported this week as Dell and EMC attempt to resolve the $67 billion question of how to finance one of the biggest mergers in the history of technology.

Cloud software giant VMware has withdrawn from a previous commitment to the Virtustream cloud service venture with parent company EMC, it has disclosed to regulators.

The new direction comes as Dell, the proposed new owner of EMC and a potentially controlling stakeholder in VMware, is allegedly looking at new options to finance the $67 billion deal. According to sources quoted in Re/code Dell is looking for a buyer for its $5 billion valued technology outsourcing business Perot Systems. The funds raised would help reduce the level of debt Dell must take on if the EMC takeover is to proceed.

In November, BCN reported how questions of financing of Dell’s takeover of EMC could scupper the deal, which BCN first revealed in October. A week after the deal was announced, EMC and VMware unveiled plans for a joint, equal partnership to create cloud service Virtustream, but unease about the announcement wiped 25% off VMware share values, according to some analysts. Since Dell and its backers were planning to use share value as a means of funding the transaction the decline in stock market value threatened to undermine the funding of the deal.

Shareholders in both EMC and VMware are allegedly unhappy with the idea of the Virtustream project, which appeared to be a “dumping ground” for money-losing assets, it’s claimed.

VMware shares fell 25 cents to $58.80 by mid-morning Monday.

Meanwhile, as Dell seeks to raise $10 billion in cash to lighten the potential burden of debt, it is allegedly courting suitors for Perot Systems, an outsourcing outfit it bought in 2009 for $3.9 billion.

According to reports, Dell has been in talks with India-based Tata Consultancy Services, French outsourcing giant Atos, New York based IT services company Genpact and Canadian IT firm CGI. Talks with Tata stalled on a disagreement about the valuation or Perot Systems, say reports.

According to Re/Code sources Dell began trying to sell Perot Systems three months ago and the cash realised would be a crucial enabler for the EMC acquisition. However, a range of potential buyers who were sounded out, including IBM, Infosys and Hewlett Packard Enterprise, have passed on the opportunity.

M&A, News & Analysis, Sophos, SurfRight

Sophos drops $32m on SurfRight to enhance threat detection

Cybersecurity2Security vendor Sophos has bought Dutch cloud security vendor SurfRight, which specialises in endpoint threat detection and response (ETDR) and threat prevention, for $31.8 million.

Sophos said it will immediately integrate the SurfRight technology into its line of endpoint security systems and on completion will make the technology available via its global channel of 15,000 partners.

Sophos will continue development and support for SurfRight’s existing product line including its popular HitmanPro range of malware scanning and removal tools, which has 20 million users worldwide. Sophos will retain all SurfRight employees and the company’s office in Hengelo. SurfRight CEO Mark Loman will join the Sophos Enduser Security Group.

Hengelo-based SurfRight develops technology that detects and stops attacks by interrupting the malware and advanced persistent threat (APT) vectors. The software spots any dubious looking memory manipulations, which are often a hallmark of malicious code that might be running furtive activity. The ability to nip these exploits in the bud can fortify endpoint security mechanisms, by thwarting malicious code’s abuses of processor and memory resources. Surfright’s portfolio also includes anti-espionage and anti-ransom software to prevent the growing threat of malware software such as CryptoLocker.

The logic of the deal, for SurfRight, is a high-growth industry leader with a world channel and the support of specialized product development teams, according to SurfRight CEO Mark Loman. “We built this technology to address every vector of an APT attack in an auto-responding, coordinated manner,” he said.

Sophos’ security strategy uses multiple components of security protection, including network security and endpoint security that continuously communicate with each other. This, says Sophos, makes for faster threat detection and cuts the time and resources needed for investigating security incidents.

Interrupting and mitigating custom-made malware is becoming increasingly important as traditional antivirus and network-based intrusion detection systems cannot cope with the speed of threats generated in the modern cloud environment, according to Dan Schiappa, senior VP of Enduser Security at Sophos.

Dell, EMC, Financial Results, M&A, News & Analysis, Virtustream, VMware

Shareholders question value in Dell/EMC deal

Dell office logoThe prospect of a potential shareholder revolt has changed the terms of the EMC takeover by Dell.

Under a new proposal EMC will retain a majority stake in Virtustream and has dropped plans to integrated it with VMware, according to sources quoted in Reuters.

Shares in VMware have lost a quarter of their value since Dell’s $60 billion deal to buy EMC was reported in BCN in October. The fall in share value could jeopardise the takeover deal, given the complicated stock related funding of the $67 billion transaction. Dell was originally set to pay EMC shareholders $24.05 per share in cash along with a special stock that tracks the common shares of EMC’s owned virtualisation company VMware.

Under the terms of the Dell deal, EMC shareholders will receive a 0.111 share of VMware tracking stock for each EMC share. However, with VMware shares falling, the value of one of EMC’s most precious assets is a major concern to stakeholders on both sides of the takeover.

A new plan has been hatched, reports Reuters, with EMC set to assume Virtustream’s losses by keeping a majority stake, while VMware will have a minority stake, in order to distance itself from the effects of the loss maker.

News of the new deal made VMware’s common shares improve in value by 3.85% at close of play on the New York Stock Exchange yesterday. Their current price stands at $60.35 a share. Uncertainty about the future of VMware has affected its ability to close deals, according to reports, while a disappointing earnings forecast for fourth-quarter revenue was blamed on currency fluctuations across China, Russia and Brazil.

Investors are asking EMC to launch a share buyback programme for VMware, according Reuters, but no decisions have been made. Activist hedge fund Elliott Management, one of the architects of strategy change at virtualisation company Citrix, is a top EMC shareholder.

Buying back shares could prove expensive, reported Recode. Since $5.7 billion of VMware’s $7.2 billion in cash and short-term investments is held outside the U.S. and subject to corporate taxes if the money is repatriated. Some shareholders pushing for the buyback have suggested taking on debt to pay for it.

EMC bought Virtustream for $1.2 billion in July and its ownership is shared between parent EMC and VMware on a 50/50 basis. Ending the joint venture arrangement could relieve pressure on VMware and cut the amount of capital spending and additional investment Virtustream would need, according to Bernstein analyst Toni Sacconaghi, in a research note seen by Reuters.