The Summer of M&A: Cisco, SolarWinds, Quest, More
The consolidation train doesn't seem to be slowing down.
![Mergers and Acquisitions Mergers and Acquisitions](https://eu-images.contentstack.com/v3/assets/blt10e444bce2d36aa8/bltb978c688b73324bd/65245dcfe4af7dbf5fc3c81c/Mergers-and-Acquisitions-2018.jpg?width=700&auto=webp&quality=80&disable=upscale)
Cox Business expanded its managed services and cloud portfolio with the acquisition of RapidScale.
The acquisition “immediately” bolsters Cox’s transport and connectivity capabilities.
The deal helps scale cloud provider RapidScale, which was founded in 2008. The company’s cloud solutions include backup, server and desktop.
NTT Corp. is merging five of its subsidiaries into a single provider of IT services.
Dimension Data, NTT Communications, NTT Data, NTT Security and NTT’s innovation lab will roll into an entity called NTT Inc. The parent company said it will establish NTT Inc. by the end of March 2019.
The merger will tackle the brand confusion and a sort of auto-cannibalism that have resulted from these NTT Corp. subsidiaries offering similar services and competing against one another. And NTT executives say merging the companies offers the best strategy to approach quickly evolving global market.
IT services and consulting firm NexusTek (No. 33 on the 2018 Channel Futures MSP 501) has completed three more acquisitions this year — Cal Net Technology Group, Syndeo Technologies and Decision Consultants (DCI).
The purchases in Southern California, Arizona and New England, respectively, mark five for NexusTek this year and eight in four years, each of which “directly benefits customers by augmenting the company’s core competencies and ability to execute best practices.”
NexusTek is backed by Abry Partners, a private-equity firm with more than $77 billion of leveraged transactions under its belt.
MSP Computex Technology Solutions announced it would buy fellow MSP Synetra, which is based in Dallas. The deal marks the fourth acquisition by Computex since 2012, and the first under the leadership of its president and CEO John Schilsky.
Both Computex and Synetra are Cisco partners and this acquisition strengthens Computex’s partnership with the networking giant, Schilsky told Channel Futures.
Cisco is paying $2.35 billion for Michigan-based Duo Security, whose technology the former sees as advantageous to its intent-based networking strategy.
Founded in 2010, Duo Security provides two-factor authentication, endpoint remediation and secure single sign-on tools. The company’s security solution verifies the identity of users and the health of their devices before granting them access to applications to help prevent cybersecurity threats.
Email and data-security company Mimecast is buying Israeli security software developer Solebit in an $88 million deal.
Solebit’s technology identifies and isolates zero-day malware and unknown threats in data files as well as links to external resources. Further enhancing Mimecast’s platform architecture, Solebit provides threat protection designed to help customers face today’s broad threat landscape with evasion-aware, signature-less technology.
Julian Martin, Mimecast’s vice president of global channels and operations, tells Channel Partners Solebit has developed a differentiated approach to threat detection.
Gigamon, the cybersecurity provider, is acquiring Seattle-based Icebrg, which offers data collection, processing and analytics capabilities.
The combination of network traffic visibility from Gigamon’s platform, and Icebrg’s detection and triage of threats, will allow enterprises to reduce risk and keep pace with the rapidly evolving threat landscape, according to Gigamon.
Phil Griston, Gigamon’s senior director of partner marketing and development, tells Channel Futures that for partners that run their own MSSP business, this is an “ideal solution to use.”
Hitachi Vantara, Hitachi Ltd.’s wholly owned subsidiary that formed a year ago, announced it’s buying Rean Cloud, a global cloud systems integrator, managed service provider, and solutions developer of cloud-native applications across big data, machine learning (ML) and the internet of things (IoT).
Real Cloud also is an AWS premier consulting partner and silver Microsoft Azure partner.
Hitachi Vantara’s goal in acquiring the firm is to reinforce its ability to accelerate secure enterprise cloud adoption across multicloud environments and strengthen its ability to manage and operate traditional applications as well as emerging workloads in artificial intelligence (AI) and ML.
With the purchase of Metalogix, Quest Software is adding Office 365 and SharePoint migration and management to its portfolio of Active Directory and Exchange tools. It also gets a new SaaS offering to simplify consolidation of Office 365 tenants.
The new Quest On Demand Migration tool allows partners and customers to consolidate their Office 365 accounts with tenant-to-tenant integration of accounts, email and One Drive for Business storage.
Quest launched the new tool during this summer’s Microsoft’s Inspire partner conference in Las Vegas, where the company also started explaining the implications of its acquisition of Metalogix.
AllCloud, based in Israel, announced the acquisition of Toronto’s Figur8 Cloud Solutions, giving the company an additional presence in North America.
The channel partner also said it raised $7 million in new funding led by existing AllCloud investors, as well as Discount Capital and Hallett Capital.
Established in 2008, AllCloud, a solution provider and MSP, offers services up and down the cloud stack, from infrastructure to the software layer.
Broadcom made an $18.9 billion bid for CA Technologies in a deal that confused a lot of analysts.
Michael Finneran of dBrn Associates said when he initially heard about the deal he was thrown by the “total lack of synergy between the two parties” and after further consideration, “it makes even less sense.”
Still, Broadcom called it an “important building block as we create one of the world’s leading infrastructure technology companies.”
SolarWinds, the IT management software provider, acquired Trusted Metrics, a provider of real-time threat monitoring and management software.
The acquisition extends SolarWinds’ IT management portfolio to include security monitoring.
Denny LeCompte, SolarWinds’ senior vice president of product marketing, tells us the acquisition advances his company’s mission to “provide products that make technology professionals’ jobs easier.”
AT&T upped its cybersecurity game with the acquisition of AlienVault.
The vendor offers unified security management and what it calls the “first and largest open threat intelligence community.” The companies say those capabilities will fit with AT&T’s portfolio, which includes threat detection and response.
AT&T upped its cybersecurity game with the acquisition of AlienVault.
The vendor offers unified security management and what it calls the “first and largest open threat intelligence community.” The companies say those capabilities will fit with AT&T’s portfolio, which includes threat detection and response.
This summer has seen its fair share of mergers and acquisitions with channel impact. Just since the summer solstice two months ago, we’ve seen no fewer than a dozen mergers and acquisitions of significance to the IT channel either close or be announced.
We’ve compiled a list here with the information that’s pertinent to both the channel and the industry as a whole.
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