Big M&A: Rocky 2020 Can't Stop Frontier Divestment, Cisco Technology Acquisitions

Coronavirus hasn’t stopped B2B technology players like Cisco and NetApp from making acquisitions in 2020.

ConnectWise’s Arlin Sorensen

Although an economic recession has spurred layoffs across many companies, other businesses have proceeded with M&A activity.

But for many of those companies making transactions, the methodology has shifted significantly in recent months, according to ConnectWise’s Arlin Sorensen. Sorensen said buyers had been putting a significant amount of up-front cash into their deals; however, after statewide lockdowns went into effect, purchasing agreements made more stipulations about performance.

“Nobody really knows what’s going to happen in the second half of the year and into next year,” Sorensen said in a podcast interview. “So there’s not as much willingness to put all that cash on the line upfront. They want some shared risk.”

The M&A activity varied. For example, Dell is reportedly considering a sale of its VMware stake and Tech Data has officially come under private equity ownership. Meanwhile, on the buyer side, Microsoft bought a robotic process automation capability to improve its workflow software.

Read the 11 mini-stories in our gallery below that summarize the most channel-relevant technology acquisitions of May and June 2020.

Then, you should check out our previous M&A recap, which covered March and April.