4 Most significant Tech Acquisitions in 2020 So Far
During the last couple of years, we witnessed a few exciting merger and acquisition activities in the world of tech firms. The year 2018 was particularly impressive. Let us remind you that in 2018 IBM acquired Red Hat for no less than $33 billion, and Broadcom made a move acquiring CA Technologies for $18.9 billion.
Acquisitions of this magnitude can easily shadow the acquisition activities in 2019 and 2020. We know that technology merger and acquisition deals in 2019 made a decrease of 25% year-on-year.
Does 2020 have any surprises up its sleeve in terms of groundbreaking acquisitions? Stay with us as we list out four most significant tech acquisitions in 2020 so far.
Microsoft acquires CyberX
CyberX is a renowned IoT security firm based in Israel, founded in 2013. The basic concept was to enable the customers who own IoT devices to control and manage the security across the board. CyberX targets companies of all sizes.
CyberX can help companies of all sizes identify unmanaged IoT devices, vulnerabilities, and threats. It can help them overcome cybersecurity challenges before they become a liability.
The IoT security platform they came up with was so attractive it attracted companies from all verticals. Even the US Department of Energy decided that the CyberX security platform was worth an investment. Other CyberX clients include various automotive, telecommunication, electric, chemical, and gas companies in both the US and Europe.
It was quite a surprise when Microsoft announced that it is about to acquire it. The acquisition became even more interesting when the media couldn’t put their finger on the value. Microsoft acquired CyberX for an undisclosed amount. Today, CyberX is a part of Microsoft’s cloud Azure team.
The knowledge and patents CyberX brings are going to improve services already offered via Azure Sentinel, Azure Security Center, and Azure IoT stack.
Cisco acquires ThousandEyes
ThousandEyes is a network intelligence specialist firm. This San Francisco-based tech innovation company has developed a powerful tool. It can track and record activity on the Internet, extensive, and local-area networks. ThousandEyes can also track ISP cloud data and provide valuable insights into the state of internet coverage and outages.
On May 28, Cisco came out with an interesting announcement. The company plans to acquire ThousandEyes and introduce its solutions to its products. Some of the Cisco products that can benefit from ThousandEyes acquisition are WebEx, Meraki, and SD-WAN.
Cisco has a clear plan for ThousandEyes. They already have a brand new Network Services team to welcome the ThousandEyes specialists and their solutions.
Todd Nightingale, Senior Vice President at Cisco, shared the company’s plan in a blog post:
“ThousandEyes’ technology warns us when a user’s experience is less than ideal and can pinpoint where those failures were caused. With thousands of agents deployed throughout the Internet, ThousandEyes’ platform has an unprecedented understanding of the Internet and grows more intelligent with every deployment”.
Facebook buys Giphy for $400 million
We live in the age of memes and movable images, also known as GIFs. These images have become a new communication standard. People use them when talking to each other, in social media statuses, blog posts, and turn them into funny and exciting memes.
One of the undisputed champions in the world of GIFs is Giphy, the most popular library of GIFs thousands of people use daily. Giphy also introduced a few improvements over the years, enabling the users to create their animated images.
On May 15, the social media giant, Facebook, announced that it is about to acquire Giphy. Facebook’s goal is to merge the Giphy team with its Instagram division. The value of the acquisition is quite significant. According to Axios, Facebook paid a whopping $400 million to get its hands on the Giphy platform.
Facebook’s team sees Giphy as a “leader in visual expression and creation.” It appears that Facebook and Instagram users use Giphy regularly. 50% of Giphy traffic comes from Instagram, Facebook, and Messenger.
Facebook’s goal is to take advantage of Giphy library and services and incorporate them into the Facebook app family to enable users to quickly find just the right kind of GIF whenever they want to.
VMware announces intent to acquire Octarine
Octarine offers one of the most comprehensive security solutions for DevOps teams working apps that run on the open-source Kubernetes platform. Octarine also provides services to help DevOps teams achieve compliance with their apps.
Thanks to this platform, companies can automate DevSecOps and deliver products developed under industry-grade cloud-native security. The compliance platform is there for multi-cluster and multi-tenant Kubernetes workloads.
VMware, the cloud infrastructure and digital workspace tech giant, decided to make its plans to acquire Octarine public on May 13. Last year, VMware acquired cybersecurity unit Carbon Black for $2.1 billion.
VMware’s strategy is to add Octarine tech solutions and team to the Carbon Black to be able to offer better and broad-scope security solutions to its clients, especially those working on apps running on Kubernetes container orchestration platform.
The strategy goes in line with VMware’s goal to “shift the balance of power from attackers to defenders.” This acquisition will enable VMware to offer advanced security solutions and provide additional security layers to workloads.
Patrick Morley, general manager at VMware Security Business Unit, shines the light on this acquisition:
“Acquiring Octarine enables us to advance intrinsic security for containers (and Kubernetes environments), by embedding the Octarine technology into the VMware Carbon Black Cloud, and via deep hooks and integrations with the VMware Tanzu platform.”
These are the four most significant tech acquisitions in 2020 so far. The year is slower than the Q1 and Q2 of 2018. As you can see, all acquisitions were carefully planned and executed. The goal was to improve user experience and online security and establish better control of online assets.
