Boss Insights - Tech M&A Round Up - 8th February 2020

McKinsey acquires spend analytics technology company Orpheus GmbH
Duesseldorf – 6th February 2020 – McKinsey & Company has announced it’s acquisition of Orpheus GmbH, a provider of spend analytics technology and a recognized innovator in digital procurement. Founded in Germany in 2005, Orpheus’ software helps organizations optimize their external expenditure throughout their operations by analyzing purchasing data streams for value capture opportunities and measuring realized procurement impact. With this acquisition, McKinsey brings a powerful, new offering to clients, that will enable spend transparency, spend and cost analytics, and value capture management. The new offering will combine Orpheus’ advanced platform technology and McKinsey’s industry expertise and content-rich services in digital procurement. Philipp Radtke, McKinsey Senior Partner and global co-leader of the Operations Practice, said: “The new service will offer clients deeper and more consistent insights into opportunities for spend optimization through an innovative combination of data, software, category sourcing expertise, and services. 
https://www.orpheus-it.com/McKinsey_Press_Release_Orpheus.pdf

Hyland acquires blockchain-credentialing provider Learning Machine
Cleveland – 5th February 2020 - Content services provider, Hyland, has announced its acquisition of Learning Machine, an innovator in blockchain-anchored digital credentialing solutions. The acquisition was effective February 1, 2020. Learning Machine is a pioneer in leveraging blockchain technology to authenticate documents and content. Its credentialing solution facilitates the creation and sharing of blockchain-secured digital records that are recipient owned, vendor independent and verifiable anywhere. The Learning Machine Issuing System allows any organization to easily design their records, import recipient data, issue records and manage the entire credentialing lifecycle. The system allows governments, companies and educational institutions to issue blockchain records at scale, rooted in any blockchain they choose. “This acquisition is a major step toward our goal of revolutionizing the way organizations electronically exchange trusted records,” said Bill Priemer, President and CEO of Hyland. “The addition of Learning Machine’s digital credentialing solutions to Hyland’s content services platform will enable our customers to generate and manage digital documents that are both easily shareable and instantly verifiable.”
https://news.hyland.com/hyland-acquires-blockchain-credentialing-provider-learning-machine/

Koch Industries to Acquire Cloud Software Company Infor 
New York – 4th February 2020 – Infor, a business cloud software company, has announced that the investment and acquisition subsidiary of Koch Industries, Inc., has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire the remaining equity stake in Infor, currently held by Golden Gate Capital. At the close of the transaction, Infor will become a standalone subsidiary of Koch Industries, and will continue to be operated by the company’s current management team from its headquarters in New York City. “Koch’s decision to acquire Infor is a strong endorsement of our product strategy and focus on creating innovative solutions for our customers,” said Kevin Samuelson, CEO of Infor. “As a subsidiary of a $110 billion+ revenue company that re-invests 90% of earnings back into its businesses, we will be in the unique position to drive digital transformation in the markets we serve. We are rapidly expanding our industry-specific CloudSuites and offering customer experiences and outcomes that are well beyond what is standard in enterprise software.” The transaction value has been reported to be in the region of $13 billion for the 30 per cent acquisition.
https://www.infor.com/en-gb/news/koch-industries-agrees-to-acquire-all-of-infor

Western Digital Announces Sale of ActiveScale Business to Quantum
San Jose, California – 3rd Feb 32020 - Western Digital Corp. has announced that its subsidiary, Western Digital Technologies, Inc, has entered into a definitive agreement to sell its ActiveScale™ business to Quantum Corp, accompany that stores and manages video content and unstructured data. Under the agreement, Quantum will acquire Western Digital's full line of ActiveScale products. The announcement follows Western Digital's announced strategic intent to exit Storage Systems and optimize its Data Center Systems business around Storage Platforms. Western Digital completed the sale of its IntelliFlash™ product lines to DDN last year. Senior Vice President & General Manager of the Data Center business, Phil Bullinger, said: "With their complementary portfolio of software defined solutions and technologies and established customer base, Quantum is well positioned to build on the ActiveScale systems business. Both Western Digital and Quantum are committed to executing a smooth transition for all stakeholders and ensuring that customers will continue to receive best-in-class service and support."
https://www.westerndigital.com/company/newsroom/press-releases/2020/2020-02-03-western-digital-announces-sale-of-activescale-business-to-quantum

Amadeus Acquires Optym’s Flight Network Planning Tech
Gainesville, Florida - 3rd February 2020 - Amadeus is to acquire the airline tech unit of Optym, a technology company, which helps airlines with planning and scheduling their flight networks. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Privately held Optym was founded in 2000 and has been a partner of Amadeus for over 3 years. Optym technology aims to help airlines, such as EasyJet, Latam Airlines Group and Southwest Airlines, reduce their operational costs and boost profitability as well as enhancing their service. Optym’s airline optimization services, along with the 90 employees associated with it, will become part of Amadeus Sky Suite. Head of Sky Suite, Amadeus, Renzo Vaccari, said: “Optym’s expertise in world-class decision support technologies and optimization intelligence and Amadeus’s broad product portfolio, technical expertise and global reach have complemented each other with leading airlines around the world. We are excited to join Amadeus to reinvent the future of airline network planning and scheduling. We believe airlines of all sizes and types, in all regions, can optimize their schedules and increase network profitability with our breakthrough technology.”
https://amadeus.com/en/insights/press-release/amadeus-acquires-sky-suite-optym

ICF Completes Acquisition of Incentive Technology Group, LLC
31st January - ICF has acquired Incentive Technology Group, a 350+ person team that is a leading provider of digital transformation with a focus on federal IT modernization. As agencies redefine their missions through the lens of technology, agile environments help them get further faster with less risk and less cost. ITG drives transformation through the adoption and integration of open source, low code platforms and next generation technologies. Together, the companies will pair ICF’s strategic consulting, analytics and deep domain expertise with ITG’s industry-leading digital capabilities to help agencies architect and develop the technology platforms they need to meet their missions.
https://www.icf.com/insights/culture/icf-to-acquire-digital-transformation-provider?&utm_medium=thirdparty&utm_source=itgfirm.com&utm_campaign=it-mod
https://www.icf.com/news/2020/01/icf-completes-acquisition-of-itg

Access Announces Seven New U.S. Acquisitions: Adds Markets and Expands Footprint Nationwide
Woburn, Massachusetts - 29th January 2020 – Access, the world’s largest privately-held records and information management (RIM) services provider, has announced the completion of seven new U.S. acquisitions, including: Apex Information Security, Inc. (Boston, MA); Business Data Record Services, Inc. (Minneapolis, MN); CompuVault, Inc. (St. Louis, MO); Data Logic Services (Houston, TX);  the RIM business of EDM Americas Inc. (Scranton/Wilkes Barre, PA. and 12 other locations); Underground Records Management, LLC. (Columbia, MO) and ABC Business Records Center, Inc. (Kansas City, MO).  With the acquisitions announced today, Access completed a total of 11 acquisitions in the U.S. during 2019. “Our 2019 acquisitions represent a major milestone in our company’s continued growth, expanding our locations in the U.S. to five new geographic markets, making our services even more broadly available,” said Rob Alston, CEO of Access.  “We remain committed to advancing how the world manages information with the very best service worldwide, not only with these 11 U.S. acquisitions in 2019, but with additional strategic acquisitions in Canada and South America.”
https://www.accesscorp.com/access-announces-seven-new-u-s-acquisitions-adds-markets-and-expands-footprint-nationwide/

Cactus Communications Acquires Denmark-based AI Solutions Company, UNSILO
Singapore – 28th January – Cactus Communications, a global scientific communications company, Has announced that it has acquired UNSILO, a Denmark-based Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) company that specializes in text analytics, linguistics and data science. UNSILO, co-founded by Mads Rydahl and Thomas Laursen, provides AI tools and solutions for publishers to grow their business and improve customer experience through products such as Classify which helps publishers package and sell content in new ways, Recommend which supports the discovery of new and existing research, and Evaluate which helps scale up the capacity of the journal editorial office. It has partnered with leaders in the STM industry like BMJ, Wiley, Clarivate Analytics, and Taylor & Francis to develop solutions for the publishing ecosystem. Co-founder, Mads Rydahl, headed product design at Siri before it was acquired by Apple. Thomas Laursen, Co-founder and CEO of UNSILO, said, “By combining CACTUS’s scale and reach in the publishing and pharmaceutical industries with UNSILO’s text intelligence platform, we can advance faster and improve both quality and time-to-publication to the benefit of our customers.” 
https://unsilo.ai/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Press-release-UNSILO-joins-CACTUS-English.pdf

VMware to Acquire an AI-Powered Network Analytics Startup
Palo Alto, California – 21st January 2020 -  In announcing its intent to purchase artificial intelligence-based network analytics startup, Nyansa for an undisclosed amount, Dell-owned cloud and virtualization giant, VM Ware, continues its buying streak. This latest acquisition comes just three weeks after VMware completed its $2.7 billion acquisition of Pivotal and is VMware's second AI related purchase in less than six months. While, back in August, it completed its purchase of Austin-based startup, Bitfusion, which specialized in virtualization software for the accelerated computing required for most machine learning workloads. Sanjay Uppal, Vice President and General Manager, VeloCloud Business Unit, VMware, said: “The acquisition of Nyansa will accelerate VMware’s delivery of end-to-end monitoring and troubleshooting capabilities for LAN/WAN deployments within our industry-leading SD-WAN solution. Nyansa is a proven solution that solves many of the shortcomings of today’s vendor-specific solutions. Nyansa currently analyzes user network traffic from more than 20 million client devices across thousands of customer sites at companies including Tesla, Uber, Lululemon, Rooms To Go, GE Healthcare, SF International Airport, Stanford, Northeast Georgia Healthcare System and many others.” 
https://www.vmware.com/company/news/releases/vmw-newsfeed.VMware-Announces-Intent-to-Acquire-Nyansa.db211025-9f93-46ec-bec9-d71ef3c38a68.html

Liberty Global Announces Partnership with Infosys to Optimize Workforce across IT and Infrastructure Platforms 
Denver, Colorado - 4th February 2020 - Liberty Global plc one of the world’s leading converged video, broadband and communications companies, has announced that it has selected Infosys as the strategic partner to ensure business continuity in the company’s transfer of approximately 300 roles across operations management and service delivery. Following the completion of the sale of its operations in five markets over the past two years, Liberty Global has been optimizing its workforce to better deliver services to its customer base while also providing services under its Transitional Service Agreements (“TSAs”) with third-party purchasers, like Vodafone. Infosys – a global leader in next-generation digital services and consulting – will focus primarily on managing IT and infrastructure platforms under the TSAs. The new agreement provides Liberty Global with enhanced flexibility to serve its customers, simplify, and align its operating model with its overall existing business, while ensuring seamless operational continuity for customers and partners. As part of this contract, Liberty Global will transfer up to 300 employees from its operations in The Netherlands, United Kingdom and Poland to Infosys, helping to retain talent and expertise while also providing access to additional resource and centres of excellence. 
https://2zn23x1nwzzj494slw48aylw-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/02-04-Liberty-Global-Announces-Partnership-with-Infosys.pdf

08 February 2020