j2 Global buys into CRM, nabs Landslide Technologies

Posted by on February 6, 2012

Contact: Ben Kolada J2 Global continues to diversify its business through M&A, this time with the acquisition of Landslide Technologies. The company’s latest deal, its second in as many weeks, is j2′s first CRM purchase – a stark contrast from its recent M&A plays, which have focused primarily on propping up its managed messaging business [...]

IBM plays small ball in big market

Posted by on February 2, 2012

Contact: Ben Kolada, Vishal Jain, Chris Hazelton After a streak of batting in the majors, Big Blue recently took a swing in the minor leagues. The company’s recently announced pickup of Worklight is one of the smallest deals it has announced in more than two years. (In fact, Worklight’s $70m price tag is a fraction [...]

Sizing the SaaS M&A market

Posted by on January 31, 2012

Contact: Ben Kolada Traditional IT service providers, accustomed to an on-premises model of delivering products and services, have been rapidly buying into the SaaS sector to fulfill enterprises’ demand for SaaS offerings. The result has been a rapid increase in both the volume and value of SaaS deals announced. The most notable are Oracle’s RightNow [...]

IGT rolls dice on Facebook gaming, but hedges bet

Posted by on January 13, 2012

Contact: Brian Satterfield In yet another sign of the power of social networking, casino gaming systems maker IGT agreed on Thursday to purchase Facebook casino videogame startup Double Down Interactive for a potential consideration of up to $500m. The Double Down deal highlights the growing importance of social networking websites to traditional gaming companies, as [...]

Social software M&A on the uptick in 2011

Posted by on January 11, 2012

Contact: Brian Satterfield As more businesses leverage social networking websites for marketing and customer support purposes, many big-name buyers are finding social media software vendors to be increasingly attractive targets. The number of deals in the sector rose more than 150% in 2011 from 2010, while spending during that same period soared more than five-fold [...]

And the Golden Tombstone goes to …

Posted by on December 23, 2011

Contact: Brenon Daly It’s time to once again hand out our annual award for Tech Deal of the Year, as voted by corporate development executives in our recent survey. For the second straight year, the voting came down to a tight race between two transactions. For 2011, Google’s planned purchase of Motorola Mobility just edged [...]

A December rebound in tech M&A

Posted by on December 9, 2011

Contact: Brenon Daly After three months of basically standing on the sidelines, tech dealmakers have stepped back into the market in a big way in December. During just the first week of the final month of 2011, the value of announced transactions across the globe hit $8.6bn, led by SAP’s announcement of the largest-ever SaaS [...]

The Houses of Morgan are in demand for on-demand work

Posted by on December 8, 2011

Contact: Brenon Daly It turns out that the advisers for the largest-ever SaaS acquisition are also the busiest in terms of restocking the ranks of publicly traded subscription-based software companies. J.P. Morgan Securities, which banked SAP, and Morgan Stanley, which advised SuccessFactors, are upper left on the prospectuses of no fewer than five SaaS vendors [...]

SuccessFactors works the other side of the deal

Posted by on December 6, 2011

Contact: Brenon Daly In one of the quickest M&A turnarounds, SuccessFactors has gone from a seller to a buyer in just a matter of days. The human capital management (HCM) vendor announced over the weekend that it would be selling itself to SAP for $3.4bn in cash, the largest-ever SaaS deal. The ink was hardly [...]

SAP looks to SuccessFactors for success in the cloud

Posted by on December 5, 2011

Contact: Brenon Daly After struggling for years to build its own on-demand offering, SAP plans to buy its way into cloud-based software, handing over $3.65bn for SuccessFactors in what would be the largest-ever SaaS acquisition. The deal combines the largest ERP vendor, which has some 500 million users, with the fast-growing human capital management (HCM) [...]

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