Boss Insights – News Round Up – October 2017

Cisco announces intent to acquire BroadSoft, Inc for $1.9 Billion
SAN JOSE, Calif. – On October 23, 2017, Cisco announced its intent to acquire BroadSoft, Inc. a publicly-traded company, headquartered in Gaithersburg, MD and a provider of cloud calling and contact center solutions. Collaboration is the first step to business digitization. Businesses everywhere are delivering new customer experiences and empowering their workforces to innovate, using collaboration technology to transform the way people and teams interact and innovate in real time. The acquisition of BroadSoft accelerates the growth of Cisco’s cloud collaboration portfolio by adding cloud voice and contact center solutions to Cisco's meetings, hardware and services portfolio. Together, BroadSoft and Cisco will be well-positioned to deliver a full suite of collaboration capabilities to power the future of work. https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/about/corporate-strategy-office/acquisitions/broadsoft.html

vXchnge Purchases Austin Data Center Campus for $20 Million
AUSTIN – October 24, 2017 – vXchnge has announced it has acquired a 100,000-square-foot data center and the surrounding 18-acre campus in Austin, Texas. The facility has the capacity to grow to 26 Megawatts of power. “Austin is a hyper-growth market for vXchnge. The demand continues for vXchnge from existing and new customers who are deploying new applications and compute technologies at the edge,” stated Keith Olsen, Chief Executive Officer at vXchnge. “The projected forecasts for the Austin marketplace are robust, and vXchnge continues to invest in capacities and capabilities to support the demand from hyper-scale and IoT deployments.” The Austin facility is undergoing a doubling of its current capacity to support near-term demand, and the acquisition provides vXchnge the ability to meet long-term customer growth.  vXchnge data centers, including the Austin facility, provide customers with high-performance infrastructure, security and technical resources on-site 24x7x365 to safeguard and support customers, and their brands. The vXchnge facility provides a robust carrier and interconnection exchange for hybrid-cloud deployments. http://www.vxchnge.com/press-releases/vxchnge-purchases-austin-data-center-campus/

Atento and FALCONI sign strategic alliance to provide integrated management consulting and outsourcing services for all types of organizations
SAO PAULO, October 26, 2017– Atento S.A, a provider of customer relationship management and business process outsourcing services (CRM/BPO) in Latin America, and one of the top five providers worldwide, and FALCONI, a management consulting firm in Brazil and Latin America, have signed a strategic alliance to provide organizations in Brazil and abroad with a unique offer to generate efficiencies through process management. The alliance will enable organizations to optimize their costs and increase business efficiency through the integration of a management framework focused on results and the outsourcing of business and customer related processes. The alliance will also leverage the extensive business process management expertise of Interfile, provider of business process outsourcing services for large clients in the banking and financial services sector in Brazil participated by Atento. http://atento.com/news-room/press-releases/atento-and-falconi-sign-strategic-alliance-to-provide-integrated-management-consulting-and-outsourcing-services-for-all-types-of-organizations/

J P Morgan Chase to acquire WePay to fully integrate payments into software used by millions of small businesses
NEW YORK - JPMorgan Chase & Co. has announced its intent to acquire WePay to make it easy for business app makers and independent software vendors (ISVs) to seamlessly integrate payments into the software commonly used by small businesses. Chase and WePay will ease payment friction for both software providers and merchants. A Silicon Valley-based financial technology firm founded in 2008, WePay delivers payments-as-a-service APIs for simple onboarding and activation of payments, without impacting the user experience designed by developers. “With WePay, Chase is taking the work out of payments for both our business clients and the software providers who serve them,” said Matt Kane, CEO of Chase Merchant Services. "We are powering payments for growth, so businesses can accept payments instantly, get paid faster, and never lose a sale. And we’ll give ISVs a payment facilitator-like experience without the overhead or increased fraud risk.” https://go.wepay.com/news

Digital Realty and Mitsubishi Corporation Announce Joint Venture in Japan
SINGAPORE, October 23, 2017 - Digital Realty, a global provider of data centre, colocation and interconnection solutions, has announced it has entered into a 50/50 joint venture with Mitsubishi Corporation to provide data centre solutions in Japan.  The new joint venture will benefit from Mitsubishi Corporation's local enterprise expertise and established data center presence in Tokyo, as well as Digital Realty's global client base and track record of data centre operational excellence. The joint venture will operate under the name MC Digital Realty.  Mitsubishi Corporation will contribute two existing data centre facilities in the western Tokyo suburb of Mitaka, while Digital Realty will contribute its recently completed data centre development project in Osaka.  The joint venture aims to build a meaningful platform to serve the broader Japanese market, with the potential to significantly expand its scope over the next several years. http://investor.digitalrealty.com/investor-relations/news-and-events/news/news-details/2017/Digital-Realty-And-Mitsubishi-Corporation-Announce-Joint-Venture-In-Japan/default.aspx?_ga=2.82196817.679250550.1509527068-425010660.1509527068

SailPoint Technologies Files for IPO
Austin – 20 October 2017 - SailPoint Technologies Holdings, Inc., an Identity Management and cybersecurity company, has filed paperwork for an initial public offering to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Founded in 2005 by Mark McClain, Kevin Cunningham and Jackie Gilbert, SailPoint aims to raise $100 million through the IPO. Details of how many shares will be offered or at what price are yet to be released. Thoma Bravo will maintain a controlling interest in the company. The IPO represents a promising sign for the cybersecurity industry and tech companies in general, which have seen a relatively modest number of IPOs so far, this year. Snap both had a relatively disappointing public launch, whilst Tintri, ShotSpotter, Carvana, Appian and a few others enjoyed stronger debuts. https://www.sailpoint.com/

Senior Execs Resign at Infosys
Bengalaru – 20 October 2017 - Abdul Razack, Senior Vice-President and Head, Platforms, Big Data and Analytics, and Pervinder Jo har, CEO of Edge Verve, the wholly owned products and platforms subsidiary, have both resigned. The moves are likely to be due to the restructuring by new Chairman Nandan Nilekani. Razack was among more than a dozen executives who left SAP to join Infosys, following the appointment of Vishal Sikka, who had been CTO at SAP. Most of those executives have now resigned - and the exits accelerated noticeably once Sikka announced his resignation this August. Razack's exit was widely anticipated. Other recent exits include technology head, Navin Budhiraja, Head of Design, Sanjay Rajagopalan and Ritika Suri, Executive VP - handling large deals. Johar, who came to EdgeVerve from Steelwedge Software, where he was President and CEO, has resigned within eight months of joining Infosys. The leadership at EdgeVerve has been facing an uphill task in monetising its business, which contributes just 5.5% to Infosys' revenues. Chairman Nilekani is now expected to re-evaluate current strategy, with analysts suggesting EdgeVerve should be a priority. https://www.infosys.com/newsroom/

Cisco to acquire machine learning start up, Perspica, Inc
SAN JOSE, Calif. – On October 19, 2017, Cisco has announced its intent to acquire Perspica, Inc. Headquartered in San Jose, CA. Perspica provides machine learning and data processing technology and expertise, which will support and accelerate Cisco’s AppDynamics vision. With the addition of Perspica to AppDynamics capabilities, customers will be able to further leverage machine learning capabilities to analyze large amounts of application-related data, in real-time and with business context, including when an application is deployed in a company’s public, private and multiple cloud environments. Together, AppDynamics and Perspica can provide enterprises with a way to filter crucial signals from the noise and drive their growth, based on the digital streaming insights of their businesses. “Ultimately, it will enable us to deliver our vision for the future of performance that is infinitely scalable and ridiculously fast to keep pace with developments in the enterprise,” said Bhaskar Sunkara, Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President of Product Management at AppDynamics. https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/about/corporate-strategy-office/acquisitions/perspica.html

AvidXchange Announces Integrated Offering with PaperSave to Help Nonprofits with Document Management, Accounts Payable, and Payment Automation
Charlotte, N.C. – October 19, 2017 – AvidXchange™, a fintech provider of accounts payable and payment automation for midsize companies, has announced a new, integrated offering with PaperSave®, a product of WhiteOwl.  The integration affords Blackbaud Financial Edge and Financial Edge NXT customers a completely paperless AP and payment processes from start to finish. WhiteOwl is a Blackbaud technology partner providing data intelligence, process management and automation to the non-profit space. PaperSave has hundreds of Blackbaud Financial Edge and Financial Edge NXT customers using their solutions for document management and invoice approval. The addition of automated payment capabilities via the AvidXchange Pay application completes the purchase-to-pay automation solution for PaperSave customers. https://www.avidxchange.com/news/avidxchange-announces-integrated-offering-papersave-help-nonprofits/

Colligo and NEOSTEK Announce Partnership Delivering Proven End-to-End Records Management Solutions to Government Clients
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA and WASHINGTON, DC– October 19, 2017 – Colligo, a provider of collaboration apps for the digital workplace, and NEOSTEK, an information management and technology consulting firm, specializing in providing services to the US federal government, have announced a partnership that will deliver end-to-end record management solutions to government clients. “We’re pleased to formally announce our partnership with NEOSTEK, building on our established success together,” said Colligo’s COO, Loic Triger. “Their deep consulting expertise in solving the records and information management needs of federal government agencies is the perfect complement to our technology. In particular, our joint focus on achieving 100% user adoption of email records management solutions will give our customers peace of mind that they have the governance in place to thoroughly respond to FOIA requests.” https://www.colligo.com/company/news-releases/colligo-and-neostek-announce-partnership-delivering-proven-end-to-end-records-management-solutions-to-government-clients/

Flipkart Invests $500 Million in PhonePe
Bengaluru – 13th October 2017 - Online retail major Flipkart has committed $500 million to its payment arm PhonePe, as the Bengaluru-based company prepares to take on Noida-based rival Paytm, which has become the largest mobile wallet player. The first tranche of $180-200 million is expected to come in by December-January, said PhonePe's chief executive Sameer Nigam. The newly-committed amount adds to the $75-million worth of infusion Flipkart has made in PhonePe since the acquisition. Nigam said the funding will be used to get into the offline organised market in a big way, experiment in the offline space for the mid to small merchants segment; strengthen the technology team, which currently constitutes 50% of the workforce of PhonePe; and adding more categories in the mobile application. The company is confident about achieving its target of 25 billion digital payment transactions by next year. "A lot of our investment and energy will go into scaling up the technology teams and platform," he said.  https://www.phonepe.com/en/index.html

ParallelDots Raises $2 Million Funding from Multipoint Capital
10 October 2017, India - ParallelDots, Inc., an artificial intelligence company developing novel algorithms and high impact solutions for real-world problems, announced it has raised additional funding of $1.4 Million, bringing its total funding to $2 Million from Multipoint Capital. “We have raised $1.4 Million in additional funding from Multipoint Capital to enable us to pursue our vision and opportunities,” said Angam Parashar, CEO of ParallelDots, Inc. “This follows Multipoint’s earlier investment of $600K in early 2016 and brings our total funding to $2 Million. The funds will be used to add to our technology team, support our expanding global footprint, and general operational expenses.” Gayatri Sondhi, Managing Director of Multipoint Capital, LLC, said, “We are pleased to extend our investment in ParallelDots, Inc; the company fits our interest in making selective early stage venture investments in significant emerging technologies.” http://techstory.in/paralleldots-raises-funding-2017/ http://blog.paralleldots.com/

Temasek’s Vertex Ventures raises $210 Million Fund – Focuses on South East Asia
9th October 2017 - India - Singapore-based firm Vertex Ventures, the venture capital arm of Temasek Holdings has closed its third Southeast Asian fund at $210 million, a record in the region that exceeded its target of $150 million. Vertex plans to continue its strategy of investing in early-stage technology companies in southeast Asia and India across enterprise technology, financial technology and consumer internet, it said in a statement. Vertex Venture Holdings focuses on venture capital investment opportunities in the information technology and healthcare markets, primarily through the global family of direct investment venture funds. Headquartered in Singapore, it collaborates with a network of global investors who specialize in local markets. http://www.temasek.com.sg/

Wipro Digital to Acquire Cooper, a Leader in UX and Interaction Design, and Expand Designit’s Capabilities
Bangalore and New York, October 5, 2017 – Wipro Digital has announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Cooper, an award-winning design and business strategy consultancy. Wipro Digital is the digital business unit of Wipro Limited, a global information technology, consulting and business process services company. Cooper will become part of Designit, Wipro Digital’s strategic design arm, further strengthening its design and innovation capabilities, expanding its reach in North America and adding capabilities in professional design education. “Our combined capability across design, strategy and technology gives us a unique platform for working side-by-side with clients on the entirety of their digital initiatives.” said Rajan Kohli, Global Head and Senior Vice President, Wipro Digital. http://wiprodigital.com/news/wipro-digital-acquire-cooper-leader-ux-interaction-design-expand-designits-capabilities/