When I visited the GE Global Research Center in Niskayuna, New York in April 2017, I thought I saw a company that was working hard to avoid disruption, but perhaps the leafy campus, the labs and experimental projects hid much larger problems inside the company. Yesterday GE announced that it is spinning out its Industrial IoT […]
View More GE’s digital future looking murkier with move to spin off Industrial IoT bizCategory: Mergers and Acquisitions
Trello acquires Butler to add power of automation
Trello, the organizational tool owned by Atlassian, announced an acquisition of its very own this morning when it bought Butler for an undisclosed amount. What Butler brings to Trello is the power of automation, stringing together a bunch of commands to make something complex happen automatically. As Trello’s Michael Pryor pointed out in a blog […]
View More Trello acquires Butler to add power of automationIBM selling Lotus Notes/Domino business to HCL for $1.8B
IBM announced last night that it is selling the final components from its 1995 acquisition of Lotus to Indian firm HCL for $1.8 billion. IBM paid $3.5 billion for Lotus back in the day. The big pieces here are Lotus Notes, Domino and Portal. These were a big part of IBM’s enterprise business for a long […]
View More IBM selling Lotus Notes/Domino business to HCL for $1.8BAutodesk agrees to buy PlanGrid for $875 million
Autodesk announced plans to acquire PlanGrid, a San Francisco startup that helped moved blueprints from paper to the iPad when it launched in 2011. This digitization of construction fits with Autodesk’s vision of digitizing design in general and CEO Andrew Anagnost certainly recognized the transformational potential of the company he was buying. “There is a […]
View More Autodesk agrees to buy PlanGrid for $875 millionMicrosoft to acquire Xoxco as focus on AI and bot developers continues
Microsoft has been all in on AI this year, and in the build versus buy equation, the company has been leaning heavily toward buying. This morning, the company announced its intent to acquire Xoxco, an Austin-based software developer with a focus on bot design, making it the fourth AI-related company Microsoft has purchased this year. […]
View More Microsoft to acquire Xoxco as focus on AI and bot developers continuesEnterprise shopping season starts early with almost $50B in recent deals
Black Friday may still be 10 days away, but shopping season started early in the enterprise this year. We have seen acquisitions totaling almost $50 billion in the last couple of months alone, topped by the mega $34 billion IBM-Red Hat deal two weeks ago. What exactly is going on here? While not every deal has […]
View More Enterprise shopping season starts early with almost $50B in recent dealsIBM is betting the farm on Red Hat — and it better not mess up
Who expects a $34 billion deal involving two enterprise powerhouses to drop on a Sunday afternoon, but IBM and Red Hat surprised us yesterday when they pulled the trigger on a historically large deal. IBM has been a poster child for a company moving through a painful transformation. As Box CEO (and IBM business partner) Aaron […]
View More IBM is betting the farm on Red Hat — and it better not mess upThe largest software acquisition ever: IBM to buy Red Hat for $34B
At a price typically reserved for semiconductor companies, telecoms, and pharmaceutical giants, IBM announced today it would pay a record $34 billion in cash and debt to acquire enterprise open source provider Red Hat. Eclipsing Microsoft’s $26.2 billion acquisition of LinkedIn, this is the biggest software acquisition in history. It’s not the biggest tech acquisition […]
View More The largest software acquisition ever: IBM to buy Red Hat for $34BPalo Alto Networks to acquire RedLock for $173 M to beef up cloud security
Palo Alto Networks launched in 2005 in the age of firewalls. As we all know by now, the enterprise expanded beyond the cozy confines of a firewall long ago and vendors like Palo Alto have moved to securing data in the cloud now too. To that end, the company announced its intent to pay $173 […]
View More Palo Alto Networks to acquire RedLock for $173 M to beef up cloud securityRich-text editing platform Tiny raises $4M, launches file management service
Maybe you’ve never heard about Tiny, but chances are, you’ve used its products. Tiny is the company behind the text editors you’ve likely used in WordPress, Marketo, Zendesk, Atlassian and other products. The company is actually the result of the merger of Moxiecode, the two-person team behind the open source TinyMCE editor, and Ephox, the […]
View More Rich-text editing platform Tiny raises $4M, launches file management serviceAdobe gets its company, snaring Marketo for $4.75 billion
A week ago rumors were flying that Adobe would be buying Marketo, and lo and behold it announced today that it was acquiring the marketing automation company for $4.75 billion. It was a pretty nice return for Vista Equity partners, which purchased Marketo in May 2016 for $1.8 billion in cash. They held onto it […]
View More Adobe gets its company, snaring Marketo for $4.75 billionZendesk expands into CRM with Base acquisition
Zendesk has mostly confined itself to customer service scenarios, but it seems that’s not enough anymore. If you want to truly know the customer behind the interaction, you need a customer system of record to go with the customer service component. To fill that need, Zendesk announced it was acquiring Base, a startup that has […]
View More Zendesk expands into CRM with Base acquisition