So Much M&A to Keep Up With

Peter : On Rad's Radar?
Peter
| Peter Radizeski of RAD-INFO, Inc. talking telecom, Cloud, VoIP, CLEC, and The Channel.

So Much M&A to Keep Up With

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I cannot keep up with all the merger and acquisition activity happening right now. Here is some of it.

A big one for me is that Accenture acquired Cloud Sherpas. Sherpas was one of the largest Google integrators. Now they do other stuff - with 1100 employees you would have to. They are being acquired by a large consulting firm that does system integration work. Can you say clash of culture?

Barracuda to Acquire Intronis. Barracuda fame is from the days of appliances for email filtering and backup. I see their ads at airports. They have moved into security and storage. Barracuda is buying Intronis, an MSP's data storage and backup system. Intronis has moved into the data protection space. It will probably make for a good team up.

LogMeIn Acquires LastPass for $110 Million. Last Pass is single sign-on and password management service provider.

ConnectWise acquired ScreenConnect in 1Q2015. ConnectWise is a platform for MSPs to run their business, including a clunky CRM, remote management and some other functionality. CW, based here in Tampa, also owns LabTech and Quosal. ScreenConnect will integrate free of charge with LabTech adding remote control functions to the existing platform. There is a battle going on for the wallet of the MSP. CW doesn't have customers; they have tribe members.

Symantec spun off Veritas, a backup and DR provider, to PE firm, Carlyle Group for $8 billion! The Carlyle Group is a global alternative asset manager with $193 billion of assets under management, including Syniverse.

Dell has never been shy about acquiring companies in the IT space to expand its portfolio in managed services in order to completely replace all the hardware - PCs, servers, laptops - revenue that it used to have. Luckily, they are private so they don't have to show how it is going quarterly.

" In addition to Quest, other key acquisitions include services company Perot Systems, storage companies EqualLogic and Compellent, cloud company Boomi, systems management company Kace, virtual desktop company Wyse Technologies, networking company Force10 Networks and security company SecureWorks." [pcworld]

The move for Dell to buy EMC (and gain control of VMware) for $67 BILLION is bold. It probably won't work. I hope those folks at Silver Lake realize that adding $50B in debt is a hole that you may not crawl out of. The only deal as big was the HP-Compaq deal worth $34B (that Presidential hopeful Carly Fiorina tried to execute).

In any business - big or small - there are cultures, people, leadership, management styles, talent, processes, domain knowledge that go into making a company successful. In smaller deals, there is a good chance that these factors will be assimilated. In bigger deals, there is less chance of that. In my 16 years of paying attention to telco/tech deals, not one has worked out the way anyone thought it would. Not AOL-TW. Not SBC-AT&T. Not BellSouth-SBC. Not Frontier buying AT&T/SNET or VZ assets. Fairpoint. HP-Compaq.

Heck, like Yahoo, Google and Dell, large companies do not always reap the benefits of the acquisition. How many companies has Yahoo bought and closed? Or Google? As Rob Powell says, when was the last time you saw Force10? How is Wyse doing?

These mergers will make a few people happy - many shareholders and bankers. I feel sorry for the employees and customers.

There was noise this week about Polycom merging with MITEL because Elliott Holdings wants to make a big splash. No one I talked to thinks this makes any sense. MITEL+aastra+Polycom = a mess of debt. That means it is 75% likely to happen!



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