In the midst of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, XNUMX has followed in the footsteps of its forerunner, continuing to be an unpredictable and, at times, impressively quite difficult year. But one thing that remained constant was the relentless flow of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) in the technology industry.
According to research by Global Data, global technology M&A deals had already approached US$XNUMX trillion in the third quarter, largely supported by the technology, media and telecommunications fields. Though nothing rivals Advanced Micro Devices' €XNUMX billion acquisition of Xilinx in XNUMX, last year Intuit acquired Mailchimp for €XNUMX billion and Square shelled out a princely sum - €XNUMX billion - for Afterpay.
Global data
Global value of mergers and acquisitions.
As for whether 2022 will pick up on last year's pace, early signs seem to suggest there isn't going to be a slowdown in big contracts in the industry, with cyber security and cooperation software proving to be hot.
Here are the biggest business tech acquisitions of 2022 to date, in reverse time order:
January 5: Google acquires Siemplify for half a billion dollars
Google has announced the acquisition of the cybersecurity firm Siemplify for half a billion US dollars. The Israel-based cybersecurity start-up specializes in end-to-end security services for enterprises, generally known as Security Orchestration, Automation and Response (SOAR) services.
Google and Siemplify confirmed the acquisition, noting that Siemplify will be integrated with Google Cloud Platform and, more particularly, with its Chronicle operation. In a weblog post, Sunil Potti, VP/GM, Google Cloud Security stated that the 2 companies "share the belief that security analysts should be able to fix more incidents with greater difficulty while requiring fewer sacrifices and less specialized knowledge."
"With Siemplify, we will change the rules for how organizations study, warn of, and respond to threats," he said.
Forrester analyst Allie Desgasten noted that “a SOAR tool has been the missing piece of Google Chronicle's offering since virtually its inception: other security analytics platforms began integrating SOAR as early as XNUMX.
"This acquisition is an essential step in bringing a unified offering to professionals and being able to more directly compete in the security analytics platform space," Desgasten said.
January 4: Zoom acquires the assets of Liminal
Zoom announced that it has acquired assets from Liminal as part of its ongoing ambition to advance the future of events.
Liminal, a startup that offers event production solutions based largely on the Zoom SDK, will now be part of the Zoom team that aims to develop world-class programs and solutions that can be achieved online from anywhere in the world. planet. By adding these capabilities and more to its event management offerings, Zoom looks to continue to be the leading all-in-one hybrid event management platform on the market.
As part of the asset acquisition, 2 of Liminal's co-founders, Andy Carluccio and Jonathan Kokotajlo, will join Zoom and have a common ambition to bring more active and customizable event offering solutions to the service's customers.
In a weblog post specifying the acquisition, Zoom Marketing Director Janine Pelosi said: “Liminal's software can connect multiple Zoom HD video streams to production-grade applications and hardware. By adding these capabilities and more to our event production and management offerings, we believe we will continue to be the leading, end-to-end, hybrid event management platform on the market. "
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