SaaS, SaaS and more SaaS

Posted by on February 9, 2012

Contact: Ben Kolada Oracle today announced the $2bn acquisition of Taleo, and SAP is getting closer to completing its $3.6bn purchase of SuccessFactors. Both announcements come less than a month after Oracle closed its $1.5bn RightNow Technologies buy. These transactions are the largest we’ve seen in the SaaS sector. However, we doubt they represent the [...]

Selling to Facebook

Posted by on February 7, 2012

Contact: Ben Kolada Rather than buy into Facebook after it debuts on the open market, many companies may consider selling to the social networking giant after its IPO. Facebook is already rich with cash, and is about to become much richer. Meanwhile, its M&A strategy has so far focused on acquiring smaller startups for their [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Proofpoint refills the IPO pipeline

Posted by on December 16, 2011

Contact: Brenon Daly Wedged between the strong debuts this week of two tech companies, Proofpoint has put in its paperwork to refill the IPO pipeline. The subscription-based email security vendor filed for a rather small $50m offering, which is being led by Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank. Earlier this week, Jive Software hit the market [...]

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) [...]

J2: from a fax machine to an M&A machine

Posted by on November 3, 2011

Contact: Brenon Daly In reporting third-quarter financial results after Wednesday’s closing bell, j2 Global Communications not only posted record revenue and cash-flow levels but also highlighted the returns it has generated in its recent M&A spree. And the communication services provider, which has some $162m in cash and short-term investments in its treasury, hinted that [...]

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