Here’s Who Rocked It In B2B Enterprise Tech This Week [ Week of Jan 30 ]
Jyoti Bansal, Founder and Chairman of AppDynamics, and David Wadhwani, CEO of AppDynamics, blew everyone away with news of the $3.8 billion sale to Cisco. This was the biggest M&A multiple in software history, more than Salesforce/Demandware or Oracle/Eloqua or Microsoft/LinkedIn. Tempting to say that Cisco overpaid, but if we rewind back ten years ago, Bansal was a key member of another APM software company, Wily Technologies (founded by New Relic CEO Lew Cirne), that was sold to a large tech player (CA Technologies) at a high price. Here’s what Brad Feld wrote about the acquisition at the time:
The CA / Wily deal is an important one because it’s another acquisition in the steady stream of companies that were possibly queued up to go public that chose to be acquired instead. It’s also reinforcement of the multiples that buyers are willing to pay for sizable, high growth companies even if they aren’t profitable (although — given Wily’s size — it’s likely that it could have easily been profitable if it wanted to be — merely by sacrificing some growth.)
It’s deja vu all over again.
The Wily acquisition worked out very well for CA; it was a revenue driver for the company for a decade. But it remains to be seen if Cisco, which has no real software assets or sales penetration in the DevOps world, can make this successful.
Other interesting developments:
Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, announced that revenue for Azure is soaring. MSFT share price is up 20% in the past year and Microsoft is now worth over $500 billion for the first time since 2000. Nadella is demonstrating how one person can make a huge difference even at a company the size of Microsoft.
Ben Nye, CEO of Turbonomic (formerly VMturbo) and a Midas List member, announced a $50 million round of funding. Turbonomic has great reviews from its customers and is ranked #1 in virtualization management, so no surprises here about their success.
The CEO of Planview, Gregory S. Gilmore, announced that his company is being acquired by Thomas Bravo. Planview is in the Project Portfolio Management software market, and according to IT Central Station community members, it’s most often compared with CA PPM, Microsoft, and Planisware.
Communications company Avaya, which was worth $8 billion in 2007, filed for bankruptcy.
During these turbulent times it’s reassuring to see that Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are still optimistic.
