The 12 Biggest Channel-Impacting Mergers & Acquisitions of 2023
From Broadcom-VMware to Cisco-Splunk and all of the deals involving TSDs, we've got them in this countdown of the year's biggest mergers and acquisitions.
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Upstack made it an even 30 acquisitions with the purchase of Network One Solutions, which describes itself as a full-service cloud, communications and technology solutions consulting firm. It calls southern California home.
It was a significant milestone for Upstack, which has spent the better part of three years gobbling up agent (technology advisor) firms, and in most cases, keeping those companies' founders and top execs on as partners or consultants. If you're counting, that's about 10 acquisitions for Upstack per year.
Prior to buying Network One, Upstack pulled the trigger on an acquisition of Sidepath Global, a Nevada-based tech advisor and Intelisys agent.
Read more about Upstack's moves that are shaking up the traditional technology advisor (agent) channel.
You might say that Upstack started a trend, as other acquisition-hungry companies have followed in its footsteps.
Take Bluewave Technology Group, for instance, which in September bough JIL Communications, its third acquisition in the state of Kentucky alone. JIL, which has a significant relationship with Windstream, focuses on health care and manufacturing customers, helping to broaden Bluewave's base of customers.
Bluewave is backed by Columbia Capital. Keep up with the company's latest wheelings and dealings.
MSPs who work with Kaseya were pleased to learn of its acquisition and integration of audIT.
audIT is a SaaS-based sales presentation system that in fact was developed by a managed service provider. The software helps create non-technical sales and business presentations that SMB and midmarket enterprise clients will understand.
audIT's founder said he frequently found that potential customers were put to sleep by highly technical presentations that he thought were "exciting." That led to the founding of his product.
Now Kaseya's MSPs will have easy access to the software. Kaseya made the acquisition announcement at its Connect Global event in April.
Cableco Cox Communications, whose biggest channel-impacting acquisition to date was the purchase of RapidScale five years ago, gobbled up Logicworks, the provider of professional services and managed services in the public cloud. Believing it to be complementary to RapidScale, Cox combined the two business units after acquiring Logicworks.
Logicworks is a gold-certified Microsoft Azure partner and is considered an expert AWS consulting and managed services provider.
Cox told us it wants to "holistically" meet its customers' needs in IT, telecom and connectivity.
Read more about the cable company's key acquisition here.
One of the biggest cybersecurity deals of the year was Check Point Software Technologies' acquisition of Perimeter 81, the security service edge (SSE) and zero-trust network access (ZTNA) provider.
The purchase expands Check Point's ability to help customers accelerate the adoption of secure access across remote users, sites, cloud, data centers and the internet.
Check Point said it would integrate Perimeter 81's capabilities into its Infinity architecture, allowing it to deliver a unified security solution across the network, cloud and remote users.
Check Point's move comes as Gartner predicts the SASE market will exceed $20 billion by 2026.
Another big security acquisition came in February when global investment firm Francisco Partners said it was buying Sumo Logic, the experts in cloud log management, monitoring, and security information and event management (SIEM) tools.
Calling the sale to Francisco Partners "the next phase of Sumo Logic's journey," the company's CEO touted its cloud-native, SaaS analytics platform for observability and security.
Analysts told Channel Futures at the time that SIEM vendors in general have been working hard for the past couple of years transitioning from on-premises solutions to the cloud. This big investment made that possible for Sumo Logic.
Get the full scoop on this major deal.
In a $350 million deal, NICE, known best for its contact-center-as-a-service (CCaaS) solutions, said it would acquire LiveVox, a company that specializes in data analytics, AI, customer experience (CX) tools and more.
The two companies, as we reported in October, have both put an emphasis on CX. Coming together gives them knowledge, data, channels and advanced CX capabilities.
The winner, says Lucas Salvage, CRO at technology advisor Kairos Data Communications, is the partner who wants an AI-based CCaaS solution to offer customers, as this will lead to a "proactive outreach with conversational AI built in," said Salvage.
He wouldn't be surprised if the contact center industry consolidates more in 2024, with AI a big reason why.
On Dec. 1, we learned that Insight Enterprises, the IT service provider giant, would buy SADA Systems, the Google Cloud-only managed service provider.
While most MSPs dabble in the multicloud, SADA has kept its allegiance to Google. And that should pay off for Insight in the form of a big Google Cloud play going forward.
Insight, a Microsoft Partner of the Year, spent $410 million on SADA. It gets 850 SADA employees, adding them to its 14,500 strong.
Insight CEO Joyce Mullen said SADA will continue to operate independently.
Learn more about how this acquisition is a big-time endorsement of multicloud solutions.
The biggest M&A of the year in unified communications broke way back in January, when Mitel said it would buy Unify, Atos' unified communications and collaboration services business. Closing in October, Mitel declared it a "global powerhouse."
Mitel, with Unify, has more than 75 million users in more than 100 countries. Its community of resellers, service providers, technology and strategic alliance partners is more than 5,500.
Analyst Blair Pleasant of COMMfusion told Channel Futures that the deal offers an opportunity for Mitel partners to move upmarket. The acquisition also brings with it a managed services business and experience helping large enterprise customers digitally transform their communications.
You'll want to know more about this huge acquisition.
In one of the biggest acquisitions in the history of the technology advisor (agent) channel, AppDirect, the B2B subscription commerce platform, bought legacy technology services distributor (TSD) TBI.
Following the previous year's sales of PlanetOne and TCG to Avant and Telarus, respectively, the TSD landscape continued to contract with AppDirect's big buy.
The purchase wasn't without controversy, as AppDirect laid off dozens of TBI employees in the wake of the announcement. TBI founder Geoff Shepstone also came under fire, as employees said they were promised stakes in the business, but ultimately didn't get them in the sale.
The staggering dollar value alone makes it an easy pick for No. 2 on our list.
Cisco announced in September that it's buying Splunk, the security information and event management (SIEM) market leader, for $28 billion.
The acquisition was first rumored in early 2022, but didn't come to fruition for a year-and-a-half. The deal immediately makes Cisco a leader in SIEM, that Omdia (a Channel Futures sister company) predicts will be a $4 billion global market by 2027.
For partners, it means upsell opportunities, says Omdia's Eric Parizo.
Cisco told Channel Futures that Splunk's security capabilities complement its existing portfolio and will provide "leading security coverage from devices, to applications, to clouds."
Read our full rundown of Cisco-Splunk.
Topping our list for the sheer size of the deal ($61 billion), the length of time it took to close (18 months) and the ensuing drama (layoff rumors which for the most part would come true), Broadcom's acquisition of VMware was an easy choice for No. 1.
The drama was far from over on Nov. 22, when the deal was complete. Despite Broadcom CEO Hock Tan's frequent reassurances to VMware and its partners, some industry watchers called the combo "outright terrifying," in part do to perceived problems with the acquisitions of CA and Symantec in the past; for example, a reputation for stipping operations down to increase margins and investor returns.
Channel Futures' Broadcom-VMware layoff tracker was approaching 3,000 employees as of this writing.
That said, not everyone was down on the deal.
“Today marks the start of a new era which we believe will bring new opportunities and relevance to VMware customers across their data center and multicloud strategies,” said channel partner Xtravirt CEO Gavin Jolliffe.
Topping our list for the sheer size of the deal ($61 billion), the length of time it took to close (18 months) and the ensuing drama (layoff rumors which for the most part would come true), Broadcom's acquisition of VMware was an easy choice for No. 1.
The drama was far from over on Nov. 22, when the deal was complete. Despite Broadcom CEO Hock Tan's frequent reassurances to VMware and its partners, some industry watchers called the combo "outright terrifying," in part do to perceived problems with the acquisitions of CA and Symantec in the past; for example, a reputation for stipping operations down to increase margins and investor returns.
Channel Futures' Broadcom-VMware layoff tracker was approaching 3,000 employees as of this writing.
That said, not everyone was down on the deal.
“Today marks the start of a new era which we believe will bring new opportunities and relevance to VMware customers across their data center and multicloud strategies,” said channel partner Xtravirt CEO Gavin Jolliffe.
The pace of M&A never seems to slow in technology, and more specifically, the indirect sales channel.
Some of the biggest deals in tech in 2023 had huge ramifications on the channel. Take, for instance, the pending $28 billion acquisition of Splunk by Cisco, which will give the latter the former's security information and event management (SIEM) solutions, opening up a big opportunity for a gigantic number of partners.
Some deals have even more immediate implications. There was the mega acquisition of TBI by AppDirect, putting another dent in the number of traditional technology services distributors still doing business.
Some agents (technology advisors) were even more directly affected as they sold their businesses to the likes of Upstack and Bluewave Technology Group.
Managed service providers felt the wheelings and dealings as well, with Kaseya buying software that will make their presentations more relatable to customers.
Channel Futures took a long, hard look at the M&A landscape and came up with this countdown ranking the biggest channel-impacting M&A of the year. See our slideshow above for the deals that shook the channel as well as a few that might have slipped past you.
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