Boss Insights - Tech M&A Round Up - July 2020

Cisco Announces Acquisition of Modcam
Malmӧ, Sweden  - 31st July 2020 - Cisco has announced the acquisition of video analytics company, Modcam to accelerate the evolution of its smart cameras, and also adding Modcam’s team of highly talented engineers who bring a wealth of expertise in machine learning, computer vision and cloud-managed cameras. Modcam has developed a solution that enables cameras to become even smarter. Cisco Meraki MV smart camera capabilities include motion detection and machine learning-based object detection, all of which run at the edge, in-camera. Today, these analytics are constrained to a single camera’s view of the world. With Modcam’s technology, this micro-level information can be stitched together, enabling multiple cameras to provide a macro-level view of the real world. Modcam’s technology for precision locationing and journey pathing provides insights that inform strategic planning of physical spaces. These collaborative, cross-camera analytics can allow retailers to better understand customer behaviors. Facilities managers and office space planners can better measure occupancy and room usage, while using trend data to optimize space utilization that can create safer working practices.
https://blogs.cisco.com/news/cisco-announces-corporate-news-073120

Atlassian has Acquired Asset Management Company Mindville
Stockholm, Sweden – 30thJuly 2020 - Atlassian has announced that it has acquired Mindville, a Jira-centric enterprise asset management firm based in Sweden. Mindville’s customers include NASA, Spotify and Samsung. In acquiring Mindville, Atlassian gains access to a new market, adding asset management tools to its services. The company’s flagship product is Mindville Insights, which helps IT, HR, sales, legal and facilities to track assets across a company. It’s completely agnostic as to which assets you are tracking, though, given Atlassian’s user base, most companies will likely use it to track IT assets like servers and laptops. But in addition to physical assets, the service can automatically import cloud-based servers from AWS, Azure and GCP, for example, and the team has also built connectors to services such as Service Now and Snow Software. Commenting on the deal, Atlassian’s Noah Wasme, said: “Mindville Insight provides enterprises with full visibility into their assets and services, critical to delivering great customer and employee service experiences. These capabilities are a cornerstone of IT Service Management (ITSM), a market where Atlassian continues to see strong momentum and growth.”
https://www.mindville.com/news/atlassian
https://www.atlassian.com/company/news/press-releases

SAP Announces Intent to Take Qualtrics Public
Walldorf - 26th July 2020 - SAP SE has announced its intent to take Qualtrics public through an initial public offering (IPO) in the United States. Qualtrics is the creator of the Experience Management (XM) category, a large, fast-growing and rapidly evolving market. SAP intends to remain the majority owner of Qualtrics. SAP’s primary objective for the IPO is to fortify Qualtrics’ ability to capture its full market potential within Experience Management. This will help to increase Qualtrics’ autonomy and enable it to expand its footprint both within SAP’s customer base and beyond. SAP CEO Christian Klein said: “SAP’s acquisition of Qualtrics has been a great success and has outperformed our expectations with 2019 cloud growth in excess of 40 percent, demonstrating very strong performance in the current setup. As Ryan Smith, Zig Serafin and I worked together, we decided that an IPO would provide the greatest opportunity for Qualtrics to grow the Experience Management category, serve its customers, explore its own acquisition strategy and continue building the best talent. SAP will remain Qualtrics’ largest and most important go-to-market and research and development (R&D) partner while giving Qualtrics greater independence to broaden its base by partnering and building out the entire experience management ecosystem.”
https://news.sap.com/2020/07/sap-announces-intent-qualtrics-ipo/ 
See also: https://searchsap.techtarget.com/news/252486701/SAP-floats-Qualtrics-IPO-two-years-after-acquisition

Symphony Technology Group Acquires EthosCE, Leading Healthcare Learning Management System
Palo Alto – 28th July 2020 - Palo Alto-based Symphony Technology Group (STG), a private equity firm focused on investing in the software, data analytics and software-enabled technology services sectors, has announced that it has acquired EthosCE, a Philadelphia, Pennsylvania-based healthcare learning management system (LMS) company. This acquisition underscores STG’s commitment to building a unique software platform, offering continuing education, professional development, events, learning and content management solutions to associations, healthcare & life sciences organizations, hospitals, and universities globally. EthosCE marks STG’s second investment in this platform following the acquisition of CadmiumCD, a provider of virtual and live event management software for healthcare and other associations, in January 2020. Commenting on the acquisition, William Chisholm, co-founder and Managing Partner of STG, said: “The acquisitions of EthosCE and CadmiumCD mark the beginning of a very exciting journey for STG and the two companies. Our vision is to create a purpose-built software platform for association, healthcare, life sciences and university customers to help them manage various continuing education, professional development and learning activities, events and content for their members.” https://www.ethosce.com/blog/symphony-technology-group-acquires-ethosce-leading-healthcare-learning-management-system/

CareerBuilder kariera.gr Acquired by Local Greek Investor Group Spearheaded by One of Site's Co-Founders Theofilos Vasileiadis
Chicago – 30th July 2020 - Global HR technology company, CareerBuilder has announced that it has sold its ownership of online job board kariera.gr to a group of local Greek investors, including Mr. Theofilos Vasileiadis, a talent acquisition industry veteran and serial entrepreneur. Kariera.gr is the largest job site in Greece and has operated in the job market since 1997. CareerBuilder retained the kariera.gr brand name due to its strength and recognition in the marketplace and the site will again continue to operate as kariera.gr under the new ownership. Through an on-going partnership agreement, kariera.gr will continue to offer a range of CareerBuilder services to clients including custom career sites, Talent Network, CBAT and Social Referral. Commenting, Mary Delaney, President of International, CareerBuilder, said: "Kariera.gr has experienced significant growth while under CareerBuilder's leadership, showing a 42% increase in revenue over the last decade and a 15% increase in total number of clients in the last two years alone. This was a unique situation in having an original owner approach us to reacquire kariera.gr with an interest to have this brand once again be Greek owned.”
http://press.careerbuilder.com/2020-07-30-CareerBuilder-kariera-gr-Acquired-by-Local-Greek-Investor-Group-Spearheaded-by-One-of-Sites-Co-Founders-Theofilos-Vasileiadis

Wipro to Acquire Salesforce Cloud Partner, 4C
Bangalore, India and Mechelen, Belgium – 23rd July 2020 - Wipro Limited, a global information technology comapany, consulting and business process services company, has announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire 4C, one of the largest Salesforce partners in UK, Europe and the Middle East. Established in 1997 with its headquarters in Mechelen, Belgium, 4C is an independent Salesforce Platinum Partner and one of the leading customer-centric consultancies in Europe and the Middle East. 4C has deep capabilities across multiple Salesforce clouds including Sales, Marketing, Field Services and specializes in transforming Quote-to-Cash processes with Salesforce’s Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ) and Billing solutions. 4C has successfully delivered over 1500 projects, for more than 500 customers and is one of EMEA’s most certified Salesforce partners with over 1000 Salesforce certifications.
https://www.wipro.com/newsroom/press-releases/2020/wipro-to-acquire-4C-a-leading-salesforce-multi-cloud-partner-in-europe-and-the-middle-east-with-deep-quote-to-cash-expertise/

Device42 has Acquired ArrayIQ
Device42, maker of data center and cloud management software, recently acquired ArrayIQ, a Boston-based developer of software that automatically gives IT managers deep visibility into their storage infrastructure. Device42 said the functionality would build on its platform’s existing ability to display information about a user’s storage estate in public clouds, including AWS and Azure. A statement from ArrayIQ, announcing the deal, stated: “When we started ArrayIQ, our vision was to build the industry’s best and comprehensive storage discovery and Cloud Analytics solution. We knew, from our prior work at companies like EMC, Ca Technologies, and BMC Software, that most companies did not have deep visibility or intelligence on their storage infrastructure and how that impacts Applications and IT Services.” The statement continued: “While discovery and visibility of Storage is incredibly important, we realized that the data collected by ArrayIQ would be even more powerful when integrated into the rest of the IT/Cloud infrastructure including physical servers and other multi-tier Applications. It was clear that ArrayIQ and Device42 shared the same vision, and that there was enormous value for our customers in bringing the organizations together.”
http://arrayiq.net/blog/2020/07/arrayiq-acquired-by-device42/

HPE to Accelerate Edge-to-Cloud Strategy with Acquisition of Silver Peak
San Jose, California – 13th July - Hewlett Packard Enterprise has announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Silver Peak, an SD-WAN (Software-Defined Wide Area Network )company, in a transaction valued at $925 million.  Silver Peak will be combined with HPE’s Aruba business unit and will extend Aruba’s technology leadership in the large and fast-growing SD-WAN space. President and CEO of HPE, Antonio Neri, said: “HPE was an early mover in identifying the opportunity at the edge and that trend is accelerating in a post-COVID world. With this acquisition we are accelerating our edge-to-cloud strategy to provide a true distributed cloud model and cloud experience for all apps and data wherever they live. Silver Peak’s innovative team and technology bring critical capabilities that will help our customers modernize and transform their networks to securely connect any edge to any cloud.”
https://www.hpe.com/us/en/newsroom/press-release/2020/07/hpe-accelerates-edge-to-cloud-strategy-with-acquisition-of-sd-wan-leader-silver-peak.html

Mediaocean To Acquire 4C And Establish Modern System Of Record For Omnichannel Advertising
New York and Chicago – 13th July 2020 – Mediaocean, a global system of record for the advertising world, and 4C Insights Inc. (4C), a global data science and marketing technology company, has announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement whereby Mediaocean will acquire 4C. Infusing 4C’s intelligence and optimization into Mediaocean’s foundational platform for end-to-end media management will establish a modern system of record for omnichannel advertising. “The COVID crisis will be remembered as a tipping point in the digital disruption of many industries including advertising,” said Bill Wise, CEO of Mediaocean. “Mediaocean and 4C together will lead the evolution of modern omnichannel advertising by addressing the needs of global marketers and agencies – transparency, neutrality, intelligence and accountability. I couldn’t be more excited to lead this transformation for the company and the industry.”
https://www.mediaocean.com/press/mediaocean-acquire-4c-and-establish-modern-system-record-omnichannel-advertising

ABC Financial acquires international provider of fitness sales management tools, GymSales
Little Rock, Arkansas and Melbourne, Australia – 22nd July 2020 - ABC Financial, a provider of technology and related services for the fitness industry, announced that it has acquired GymSales, an international provider of fitness sales management tools. GymSales provides intuitive tools that help capture, nurture and convert prospective fitness club members, as well as identify and manage upsell opportunities. Automated and trigger-based communications along with real-time insights improves overall sales performance. “As competitive as the fitness market is, the combination of our experience with the member acquisition and upgrade capabilities developed by GymSales will provide sales staff with the tools needed to streamline and accelerate their sales success,” said Bill Davis, CEO of ABC Financial. “The fitness industry has enjoyed several years of strong growth and we look forward to accelerating future club growth with our expanded capabilities.”
https://abcfinancial.com/press-release/abc-financial-acquires-gymsales/

Software Sector Among Tech Leaders in Deals & Funding – M&A Reaches $3 Billion in Q2
Software industry mergers and acquisitions reached $3 billion during the second quarter of 2020, driven in part by the shift to cloud computing and cloud-native applications along with the need for heightened cybersecurity. Those trends were also reflected in the growing number of venture investments in software services startups, industry observers said. The largest software deal during the second quarter, according to Atlas VPN, was the $715 million acquisition of Conga by Apttus, a business process automation vendor. Conga is a cloud-based document management provider. Atlas VPN, which provides secure online connections, cited GP Bullhound as its source for recent purchase prices.
https://www.enterpriseai.news/2020/07/23/software-sector-among-tech-leaders-in-deals-funding/

Sikich Expands Central Illinois Presence with Acquisition of Heinold Banwart
Chicago — July 23, 2020 — Sikich announced Thursday that it has signed an asset purchase agreement to acquire the operating assets of Heinold Banwart, Ltd., a public accounting firm based in the Peoria, Illinois, area. The move expands Sikich’s presence in central Illinois. Arthur Anliker, CEO of Heinold Banwart, said: “We look forward to leveraging Sikich’s industry-leading technology capabilities and offering our clients access to an expanded suite of services.” While Tom Krehbiel, partner-in-charge of Sikich’s CPA services, said: “The Heinold Banwart team adds valuable talent to our group and strengthens our position as a leading service provider in this market.”
https://www.sikich.com/sikich-expands-central-illinois-presence-acquisition-of-heinold-banwart/

DXC Technology Divests Healthcare Provider Software Business to the Dedalus Group for $525M
Tysons, Vancouver – 20th July 2020 – DXC Technology has announced a definitive agreement to sell DXC’s healthcare software provider business to privately held Dedalus Group for $525 million in cash. The agreement brings together DXC’s software business for healthcare providers with Dedalus, a European healthcare and diagnostic software company, to create an even stronger global force in the clinical IT areas of hospital information systems (HIS), primary and social care, integrated care and diagnostics. The resulting business will be uniquely positioned to accelerate the digital transformation of clinical activity and consequently the effectiveness of healthcare systems. “The sale of our healthcare provider software business to Dedalus is consistent with our strategy of focusing on the Enterprise Technology Stack and rationalizing our portfolio. The transaction promises to be beneficial to all our key stakeholders, including our customers and our people,” said Mike Salvino, president and chief executive officer, DXC Technology.
https://www.dxc.technology/newsroom/press_releases/149164-dxc_technology_announces_the_sale_of_dxc_s_healthcare_provider_software_business_to_the_dedalus_group_for_525_million_in_cash

31 July 2020
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