M&A roundup - week ending 3/5/16

Docker acquired Conductant; IBM bought Resilient Systems; GoPro purchased Replay and Splice

Influitive, a provider of advocate marketing software, acquired mobile apps developer company Ironark Software. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed, 

Ironark is the company behind mobile apps Hub, which is a home and family organizer, and Workbase, a business task and schedule manager.

The company's founders, and its lead developer, will be joining Influitive’s product division, where they will work on expanding Influitivie's advocate communities to mobile platforms. 

GoPro acquired two mobile editing startups, Replay  and Splice. The company spent a combined $105 million for the two apps. 

Replay was developed by Stupeflix in Paris, France. Stupeflix also operates a series of other apps, including Legend, a app that animates text speech; and Steady, a camera app. It does not appear that GoPro has acquired any of these other apps in the deal. Splice was developed by Vemory in Austin, Texas.

Both teams will maintain operations in their respective locations, and will still be available on iOS, with Android releases planned for later this year. 

Docker acquired Conductant, a small startup that focused on orchestration. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

Conductant founder Bill Farner is the creator of the Aurora Project, and Docker plans to integrate Aurora with Docker Swarm to form a powerful large-scale web operations stack.

Farner, as well as co-founder David Chung and John Sirois will join Docker's infrastructure group. 

SugarCRM, which allows businesses to create better customer relationships, acquired Contastic, a  lead nurturing system. No financial terms of th deal were disclosed.  

Cy Khormaee, Contastic’s CEO, has joined SugarCRM as the director of product management for predictive analytics, where he’ll help build technology into Sugar that turns customer data into actionable recommendations for Sugar users. Future releases of Sugar will be enhanced with Contastic capabilities.

Founded in 2013, Contastic has raised funding from Lightspeed Ventures and IDG-Accel.

IBM acquired cybersecurity company Resilient Systems. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

The acquisition coincided with the launched the new IBM X-Force Incident Response Services, of which Resilient Systems’ platform will be a foundational component.

 The Resilient Systems Incident Response Platform is used today by a wide variety of the Fortune 500 as well as mid-sized organizations across a range of industries, including financial services, healthcare, retail, U.S. federal, manufacturing, and education. Financial terms were not disclosed. 

Founded in 2010, Resilient Systems raised funding from Fairhaven Capital Partners.

The transaction is expected to close later this year, subject to any required regulatory reviews.

Mobvista, a Chinese mobile ad platform, acquired NativeX, a provider of ad technology for mobile games. The deal is valued at 160 million yuan ($25 million USD) in an all cash transaction.

Once the transaction is completed, NativeX will become a subsidiary of Mobvista, Rob Weber will continue as CEO of NativeX, and serve as Vice President of the Mobvista Group.

Founded in 2000, NativeX has an audience reach of over 1 billion mobile users and works with more than 1,000 publishers including Yodo1, Square Enix, Fingersoft, MADFINGER Games, Mag Interactive, Outfit 7, and Play With Games, as well as hundreds of advertisers including Disney, King, Zynga, Rovio, IGG, and Machine Zone.

Augmented reality smart helmet company Daqri acquired head-mounted display manufacturer 1066 Labs. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

Several 1066 Labs executives have gone to work for Daqri, including CEO David Hayes who is now serving as EVP at Daqri.

Cisco announced its intention to acquire CliQr, a provider of application-defined cloud management solutions. Cisco will pay $260 million in cash and assumed equity awards, plus retention based incentives.

The CliQr team will join Cisco’s Insieme Business Unit reporting to Prem Jain, senior vice president and general manager.  Cisco will continue to integrate CliQr across Cisco’s data center portfolio. Together, CliQr and Cisco will make it simpler for customers to automate and manage application policies across the entire data center stack.  CliQr already integrates with Cisco ACI to enable application portability for on-premise and cloud environments and provide a complete solution for customers. In addition, CliQr has out-of-the box support for all major public cloud environments.

Founded in 2010, CliQr raised $38.4 million in venture funding.

The acquisition is expected to close in the third quarter of fiscal year 2016, subject to customary closing conditions.

Cisco also announced its intention to acquire Israeli chip designer Leaba Semiconductor. Cisco will pay $320M in cash and assumed equity awards, plus additional retention based incentives.

The Leaba team will report into Cisco’s Core Hardware Group, led by Senior Vice President, Ravi Cherukuri.

By combining Leaba’s semiconductor team with the Cisco engineering team, the company is hoping to accelerate its plans for Cisco’s next generation product portfolio and bring new capabilities to the market faster.

Cincopa, a video, audio and photo hosting company, acquired ZooEffect, a product that give marketers and Web masters control over their media. No financial terms of the deal were disclose.d 

ZooEffect's analytics tools will be integrated into the core products of Cincopa. 

By integrating technology from ZooEffect into its industry-leading multimedia hosting platform, which will will make it easy for marketing and sales teams to track engagement and campaign conversions in an automated fashion.

The advanced analytics tool is scheduled to be released later this year and will be included as a feature in the Corporate plan.

Outbrain, a premium content recommendation platform, acquired Revee, a technology company that allows publishers to track the revenue value of content in real-time. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

Using Revee's technology, Outbrain has launched Outbrain Automatic Yield, a content recommendation solution that enables publishers to monetize audiences with a real-time understanding of each piece of content. 

Time Inc. is the first media partner to implement Outbrain Automatic Yield and will initially roll out across Fortune and Entertainment Weekly, two of its core U.S. properties.

Revee was founded in August 2013 and raised $1 million in venture funding. 

Garmin, a developer of GPS technology, completed its acquisition of DeLorme, a company designs and markets consumer-based satellite tracking devices with two-way communication and navigational capabilities. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

Garmin will retain most of the DeLorme associates and will continue operations at its existing location in Yarmouth, Maine. The facility will operate primarily as a research and development office and the team will continue to develop two-way satellite communication and cartographic solutions.

The acquisition was first disclosed in February, 

Minted, a design marketplace, acquired Guildery, a destination site enabling designers and consumers to create and customize fabrics and home decor. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

The addition of Guildery marks Minted’s commitment to expanding its home decor business. Shane Reilly, co-founder and CEO of Guildery, will join Minted as Head of Strategic Partnerships and Jeff Marion, Guildery’s Vice President of Engineering, will lead Minted’s E-commerce Engineering.

Founded in 2013, Guildery had raised $2.1 million in seed funding from Forerunner Ventures, Cowboy Ventures, SoftTech VC, and AOL’s BBG Ventures.

NCR Corporation, a provider of consumer transaction technologies, completed the acquisition of CimpleBoxm a provider of simplified SaaS-based back-office software to restaurant operators and retailers. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

CimpleBox will be integrated into NCR Silver, the company's mobile point-of-sale solution portfolio.

 The CimpleBox software suite helps businesses reduce the amount of time spent on manual processes, consolidates data and scheduling across multiple sites and gives management visibility into the business and day-to-day operations.

Publicis.Sapient, a digital transformation platform, acquired Vertiba, a Gold Salesforce Consulting Partner specializing in the delivery of Salesforce cloud solutions. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

Publicis.Sapient will integrate Vertiba’s capabilities into the platform. Vertiba’s Salesforce skills will further strengthen Publicis.Sapient’s ability to help clients transform and optimize the ways in which they engage their customers across all aspects of the customer journey, from marketing, to sales and service, leveraging the latest cloud-based technology.

Founded in 2010, Vertiba is a privately held company headquartered in Boulder, Colorado.

Praxair, an industrial gases company, acquired NOxBOX, a company that specializes in the manufacture of inhaled gas delivery and monitoring instruments for the medical market, from Bedfont Scientific Limited. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

NOxBOX provides a range of medical devices for in-hospital use as currently authorized by local regulation.

The company will remain headquartered in the U.K., 

Postmedia Network, a Canadian newsmedia company, acquired the Ampifii platform, an intelligent engine that allows marketers to ‘amp’ their content and message across a variety of networks, from Start23. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

Ampifii’s co-creators Josh Merchant and Craig Rennick join Postmedia with Merchant  taking on the role of VP Product and Rennick in a business development role.

The acquisition is a strategic fit for Postmedia’s ongoing focus on new models to monetize content through content creation, deployment and measurement by significantly bolstering its content deployment capabilities.  ‎

Tradeweb Markets, a  builder and operator of global fixed income and derivatives marketplaces, acquired CodeStreet, a provider of trade identification and workflow management software development. No financial terms of the deal were dicsloed. 

The transaction will leverage the technology and expertise of both firms to enhance corporate bond trading on a global scale, delivering innovative tools that help identify likely counterparties and improve quality of execution with greater information protection.

Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson LLP served as outside counsel to Tradeweb Markets and Thompson Hine LLP served as outside counsel to CodeStreet in the transaction.

Scrypt, a developer of compliant productivity tools for regulated industries, completed the acquisition of DocbookMD, a HIPAA secure patient care team collaboration platform. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

Founded in 2008, DocbookMD, in use by more the 30,000 medical professionals across the US, is a HIPAA secure messaging application for both mobile and tablet, and can be accessed via any web browser.

The company had raised $4.3 million in venture funding. 

Vertafore, a developer of modern insurance technology, acquired Keal Technology, a provider of broker and commercial management systems in Canada. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

Pat Durepos, president at Keal Technology, will work directly with Greg Wright, Senior Vice President of Agency and Carrier Solutions at Vertafore. Durepos will focus on specialized product development, driving growth in the Keal portfolio, and advocating for customers in the Canadian market.

The move extends Vertafore's customer base into Canada, further creating an international footprint for the largest software provider in the insurance industry.

The acquisition of Keal Technology is expected to close by the end of March 2016.

NetSuite, a provider of cloud-based financials/ERP and omnichannel commerce software suites, acquired IQity, a provider o  cloud-based advanced collaborative manufacturing software. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

By combining NetSuite and IQity, manufacturers gain access to a modern cloud solution that can transform their business, bringing them to the forefront of modern manufacturing and helping to position them for the industrial Internet-of-Things (IoT).

At the time of the acquisitions, NetSuite and IQity had nearly 40 joint customers.

(Image source: jicc.us)