LogMeIn Scoops Up Jive in $350 Million Deal with Channel Implications

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LogMeIn, the provider of SaaS and cloud-based remote connectivity services for collaboration, IT management and customer engagement, is acquiring Jive Communications in a deal worth up to $357 million.

Upon closing, LogMeIn says the deal will accelerate its overall unified communications and collaboration (UCC) strategy and bolster its collaboration portfolio, bringing together services like GoToMeeting, GoToWebinar, OpenVoice and join.me with Jive’s UC products. The deal is expected to close during the second quarter, subject to certain regulatory approvals and customary closing conditions.

Michael Finneran, industry analyst and Channel Partners contributor, said the combination “gives them the main tools, but they are in a crowded and highly competitive market.”

LogMeIn’s Toni Iafrate

Toni Iafrate, LogMeIn’s director of public relations, tells Channel Partners that Jive has done a great job building up a “very strong partner ecosystem.”

“This is truly complementary expertise as our GoTo portfolio, and LogMeIn as a whole, are mostly direct,” she said. “It’s one of the things we’re most excited about, and we look forward to working with this base of partners going forward to enable them to sell an even more complete unified-communications story. We expect the deal to close in [the second quarter], and we’ll have more specific details at that time.”

The LogMeIn collaboration portfolio serves 25 million users, 7 million meetings, and more than 900 million conferencing minutes every month.

Jive is a privately held, venture-backed company with more than 20,000 global customers.

“With market defining brands like GoToMeeting and GoToWebinar, LogMeIn is one of the most recognized and respected names in collaboration — a leader with the reach, scale and resources capable of fueling Jive’s next chapter of growth and customer-focused innovation,” said John Pope, Jive’s CEO. “They are also a company that shares our vision and philosophy for giving millions of people a better, simpler, friction-free way to communicate and collaborate on their terms. It’s a combination that immediately gives both parties the power to deliver significantly more value to our combined customer bases.”

Following the close of the transaction, the parties anticipate that Pope will continue to run Jive.

“Jive’s success in UCaaS is a testament to its modern cloud-based platform, its deliberate focus on customer satisfaction, and its renowned culture of innovation,” said Bill Wagner, LogMeIn’s president and CEO. “We believe the combination of Jive’s … voice, video, contact center and mobile applications with our leading collaboration products, GoToMeeting and join.me, will give LogMeIn one of the best and most comprehensive UCC offerings in the market. The result is a deal that will accelerate our overall growth, set a new standard in the UCC market, and provide us with a foundation upon which we’ll build the next generation of LogMeIn’s UCC portfolio.”

Earlier Thursday, Jive named Jenne its newest distribution partner. The company unleashed its own flurry of UC updates on the channel last year.

Last February, LogMeIn completed its acquisition of Citrix’s GoTo suite of business applications, adding products including GoToAssist, GoToMeeting, GoToMyPC, GoToTraining, GoToWebinar, Grasshopper and OpenVoice to its portfolio.