Survey: lots of M&A talk, but few prints

Posted by on April 26, 2012

Contact: Brenon Daly Although key members of the broad dealmaking community indicate they have stepped up their activity in the M&A market recently, actually closing deals has proven challenging so far this year because of pricing and renewed concerns about the stability and growth outlook across the globe. That’s one of the main findings from the [...]

LANDesk’s measured return to M&A

Posted by on April 25, 2012

Contact: Brenon Daly, Dennis Callaghan As a company that has had five different owners in recent years, LANDesk hasn’t necessarily always had the stability and support that’s needed to do deals of its own. But on Tuesday, the systems management vendor, which traces its roots back to the mid-1980s, stepped back into the M&A market with [...]

Spirent secures its testing platform with Mu

Posted by on April 24, 2012

Contact: Brenon Daly, Eric Hanselman A relatively infrequent shopper, Spirent Communications has picked up Mu Dynamics, adding security testing for applications to the company’s performance-testing portfolio. The deal, which is only the British company’s second acquisition in the past half-decade, was announced last week and closed Monday. Spirent paid $40m in cash for Mu, which is [...]

Splunk soars in rip-roaring IPO

Posted by on April 19, 2012

Contact: Brenon Daly In a rip-roaring debut, Splunk soared onto the public market Thursday in an IPO that created more than $3bn of market value for the data analytics vendor. That’s a heady, double-digit valuation for a company that’s likely to generate only about $200m in sales this year. (Just as we predicted in last week’s [...]

Marketo buys into social marketing with Crowd Factory

Posted by on April 18, 2012

Contact: Brenon Daly Announcing its first-ever acquisition, Marketo said Wednesday that it is picking up Crowd Factory. The deal adds Crowd Factory’s social campaign management technology to Marketo’s marketing automation platform, expanding the distribution of marketing pitches to social channels such as Facebook pages and Twitter. Although terms weren’t disclosed, we imagine that this was a [...]

Software AG feels the need for speed in latest acquistion

Posted by on April 17, 2012

by Brenon Daly Moving to bolster its middleware messaging technology, Software AG said Monday that it would pick up London-based my-Channels. The acquisition of 13-year-old my-Channels, which is probably best known for its Nirvana product used in foreign currency trading, will provide technology to the German BPM giant that will allow customers to stream data [...]

IBM reaches into the app layer for Varicent

Posted by on April 13, 2012

Contact: Brenon Daly IBM has mostly stayed away from acquiring application vendors, reaching instead for companies that typically either bolster its sprawling Global Services division or infrastructure software business, particularly in the management layer. Big Blue stepped a bit out of its regular acquisition area on Friday with the purchase of sales performance management (SPM) vendor [...]

Tech IPO market looks to next week’s triple-header

Posted by on April 12, 2012

Contact: Brenon Daly Although the US equity market has been a bit choppy over the past week or so, shares are still generally inching higher. Sure, it hasn’t necessarily been the uninterrupted ascent of the Nasdaq that we saw in the first quarter, which recorded the strongest start to a year in two decades. But the [...]

Palo Alto puts in its paperwork

Posted by on April 9, 2012

Contact: Brenon Daly, Thejeswi Venkatesh Long rumored to be an IPO candidate, Palo Alto Networks has finally filed its paperwork for a $175m offering. The application-level firewall security vendor has put up astonishing growth in recent quarters, but unlike other early-stage companies, Palo Alto has been running in the black recently. But the real story – [...]

Dell picks up the pace

Posted by on April 5, 2012

Contact: Brenon Daly As a relative latecomer to the M&A market, Dell is making up for lost time. The company on Thursday announced its third acquisition of the week, reaching for Vancouver-based Make Technologies. Both Make and Clerity Solutions, which Dell picked up on Tuesday, produce migration software and will be slotted into the services division. [...]

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