Tech M&A Round Up - 23rd August 2019

Sphero Acquires littleBits – EdTech Duo to Accelerate Play-Based Learning for Kids
Boulder and New York – 23rd August 2019 – Sphero, a robotics and educational STEAM company, and littleBits, the company that invented the electronic building block, have announced that they are joining forces. Through this acquisition, Sphero becomes the largest player in its market. With a comprehensive offering of hardware, software, curriculum, and training, it is positioned to shape the $150 billion education technology industry. Paul Berberian, Sphero’s CEO, said: “Sphero and littleBits are on a mission to make hands-on learning fun and memorable. Together, we’re able to make an even greater impact by delivering the best possible solution — whether it is programming a robot to solve a maze or building an electronic music synthesizer. There are infinite learning possibilities — and they’re all fun.” With this deal, Sphero plans to accelerate international growth and acquire other products and companies to further expand its portfolio of STEAM products and tools.
https://www.sphero.com/about/sphero-and-littlebits-join-forces/

VMWare to Acquire Pivotal & Carbon Black
Palo Alto, California – 22nd August 2019 - VMware has announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire both Pivotal Software - in a transaction valued at $2.7 billion - and Carbon Black, at an enterprise value of $2.1 billion. In an announcement, VMware CEO, Pat Gelsinger, said: “Building on another solid quarter, we are thrilled about announcing our intent to acquire Pivotal  and Carbon Black. These acquisitions address two critical technology VMware, Inc. priorities of all businesses today — building modern, enterprise-grade applications and protecting enterprise workloads and clients. With these actions we meaningfully accelerate our subscription and SaaS offerings and expand our ability to enable our customers’ digital transformation.”
https://www.vmware.com/content/dam/digitalmarketing/vmware/en/pdf/earnings/vmw-earnings-release-nongaap-q220.pdf

Stack Sports Acquires Affinity Sports and Blue Sombrero
Plano, Texas – 22nd August 2019- Stack Sports, global provider of sports technology, has announced the acquisition of Affinity Sports and Blue Sombrero from DICK’S Sporting Goods. In connection with the transaction, the companies have entered into a long-term strategic partnership for retail promotion, live event scoring and team management technologies. Combining Stack Sports with Affinity Sports and Blue Sombrero under one organization, strengthens Stack Sports’ position in the sports software industry, creating the largest customer-base in the sports tech market and the industry’s most comprehensive suite of cloud-based sports administration, registration, communication and payment management solutions. Genstar Capital, Stack’s majority shareholder, supported this transaction with a significant new investment to fuel the growth and innovation of the combined businesses.
https://stacksports.com/partnerships/stack-sports-acquires-affinity-sports-and-blue-sombrero

Splunk to Acquire Cloud Monitoring Leader SignalFx
San Francisco – 21st August 2019 – Splunk Inc, has announced a definitive agreement to acquire SignalFx, a SaaS company specialising in real-time monitoring and metrics for cloud infrastructure, microservices and applications. Under the terms of the agreement, Splunk will acquire SignalFx for a total purchase price of approximately $1.05 billion, subject to adjustment, to be paid approximately 60% in cash and 40% in Splunk common stock. The acquisition is expected to close in the second half of fiscal 2020, subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory reviews. Doug Merritt, President and CEO, Splunk, said: “Data fuels the modern business, and the acquisition of SignalFx squarely puts Splunk in position as a leader in monitoring and observability at massive scale. SignalFx will support our continued commitment to giving customers one platform that can monitor the entire enterprise application lifecycle.”
https://www.splunk.com/en_us/newsroom/press-releases/2019/splunk-to-acquire-cloud-monitoring-leader-signalfx.html

Quorum Software Acquires OGsys
Houston – 21st August 2019 – Quorum Software, a Thoma Bravo portfolio company offering digital transformation for the oil and gas industry, has announced that it has acquired Fort Worth-based OGsys, provider of cloud-based oil and gas accounting software for small and medium-sized businesses. Quorum’s acquisition of OGsys complements its accounting solutions for mid-market and enterprise companies with upstream accounting software designed for growing businesses. The combination of OGsys and Quorum will increase the value proposition for customers of both companies. Chuck Blanton, President and co-founder of OGsys, said: “Small and medium-sized oil and gas businesses are laser-focused on production, so they need a complete view into operations. Our customers will now benefit from having access to a full suite of industry-leading solutions that will support their growth. Together, we bring to the marketplace a true integration of accounting, production, well lifecycle and land management solutions that scale, drive efficiency and promote profitability.”
https://www.ogsys.com/newsroom/quorum-software-acquires-ogsys

Cofense Secures Additional Investment from Funds Managed by BlackRock
Leesburg, VA – 21st August 2019 - Cofense™, an intelligent phishing defense solutions, has announced that funds managed by BlackRock Private Equity Partners have taken an additional ownership position in Cofense, having acquired the equity of former investor Pamplona. Cofense is pleased to expand the partnership, initially inked in 2018, which will continue to support the company’s mission to help organizations stop phishing attacks in their tracks.  Private Equity Partners is BlackRock’s fund of private equity funds platform that sources and evaluates the full spectrum of private markets investing, including partnerships, direct co-investments and secondary transactions. Rohyt Belani, Co-Founder and CEO, Cofense, said: “BlackRock’s expanded investment is a direct reflection of their confidence in our company and the growing market opportunity. Cofense has a history of successfully uncovering and reporting threats from all corners of the globe, but we are particularly proud of our track record for taking all possible measures to protect our customers, partners and prospects from phishing attacks.”
https://cofense.com/cofense-secures-additional-investment-from-funds-managed-by-blackrock/

Signify Health and Remedy Partners to Combine
Dallas, TX and Norwalk, CT (USA) – 20th August 2019 –Affiliates of Signify Health and Remedy Partners, both portfolio companies of New Mountain Capital LLC, have signed a definitive agreement to merge.  The combination will create the market leading platform delivering value-based care enablement through leveraging clinical, behavioral and social data amidst an accelerating market shift from fee-for-service toward value-based payments and arrangements based on the quality and total cost of care for a patient. “A fundamental change is underway in healthcare and patients stand to benefit because their experience is now at the center of reform. Organizing and financing health care around a patient's episode of care lowers costs and improves quality, allowing providers to move toward a value-based approach, but making the shift is challenging without analytic support, workflow and decision support software, and an innovative approach to care delivery. Leveraging Signify’s provider network in the home and community around episodes of care creates new opportunities to truly transform the way healthcare is delivered,” said Kyle Armbrester, who will lead the combined businesses as CEO.
https://www.signifyhealth.com/news/signify-health-remedy-partners-combine

Microsoft Announces Acquisition of jClarity
London, UK - 19th August 20919 - Microsoft has announced the acquisition of jClarity, a contributor to the AdoptOpenJDK project, to support their continued contributions to open source while driving increased performance for Java workloads on Azure. The team, which has proven expertise in data driven Java Virtual Machine (JVM) optimizations, will help teams at Microsoft to leverage advancements in the Java platform.  At Microsoft, we strongly believe that we can do more for our customers by working alongside the Java community. With the backing of Microsoft, the jClarity team will continue to collaborate with the OpenJDK community and the Java ecosystem to foster the progress of the platform. In the last few years, Microsoft’s usage of Java has grown and now includes multiple large-scale deployments, such as Azure HDInsight and Minecraft. Microsoft Azure and jClarity engineers will be working together to make Azure a better platform for our Java customers, and internal teams, improving the experience and performance of the platform for Java developers and end-users.

https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2019/08/19/microsoft-acquires-jclarity-to-help-optimize-java-workloads-on-azure/

Infosys Expands Strategic Partnership with Google Cloud to Help Clients Accelerate their Digital Transformation with Cloud
Bengaluru, India - 21st August 2019 - Infosys, a global company specialising in next-generation digital services and consulting, has announced that it has expanded its partnership with Google Cloud to become a Google Cloud Managed Service Provider(MSP). As a qualified MSP, Infosys will offer clients full application lifecycle services with its deep cloud and data analytics expertise. This will include consulting, assessment, migration, optimization and support services for enterprises looking to optimize their workloads on the Google Cloud Platform (GCP). Through this partnership, Infosys will offer industry-specific solutions on GCP for healthcare, financial services, insurance, telecom and retail industries. This collaboration further strengthens Infosys’ capabilities to help companies innovate and industrialize analytics, drive accelerated insights for new revenue models, realize savings and achieve faster time to market.
https://www.infosys.com/newsroom/press-releases/Pages/partnership-google-cloud-service-provider.aspx

23 August 2019