We are not at the end of July yet, and our last Analyst Note on M&A in Information Management was only a couple of weeks back, so it has been a hectic month so far – though we may have missed some, of the deals, those we have seen to date are:
- HPE bought Dermined AI, a vendor focused on making training AI easier
- Next Chapter (CaseWorks) was acquired by private equity firm Banyan Software
- Mortgage document specialist LoanLogics was acquired by private equity firm Sun Capital
- Amazon (AWS) acquired Wickr, a secure file sharing/video conferencing startup
- AppFire (which recently raised $100m in funding from TA Associates) made its 12th acquisition of enterprise collaboration vendor Spartez Software
- Swiss Post acquired file-sharing vendor Tresorit
I don’t expect this pace to slow down, as we have on the one hand some overdue consolidation going on and on the other a lot of private equity firms looking for companies to buy. Added to the mix is the adjustment underway in the workplace from everyone in the office to many now permanently working remotely. It’s one thing to provide corporate access to video conferencing and messaging systems; it’s another challenge entirely to provide remote and tightly managed access to all the data and files those workers need to get their job done. Hence, over the next year, we can expect more deals in the digital workplace sector, and more focus (and deals) involving the management, processing, and curation of information, via AI & ML in the back office.
July is typically a sleepy month in the software industry; maybe the pandemic has messed with our sense of time as this year, things seem quite different. My educated guess is this is just the start of a bumper year of change still to come.