Otra (fuerte) adquisición de una startup en la nube

CSC just acquired cloud startup ServiceMesh

CSC just acquired cloud management startup ServiceMesh for an unspecified sum.

ServiceMesh is a Santa Monica-based startup that aims to give large enterprises a bit more control over the cloud. The company raised $15 million in venture capital from Ignition Partners in 2011 to compete with giants like IBM and HP. It was founded in 2009.

CSC has not revealed the amount it paid for ServiceMesh, although we hear from several sources familiar with the matter that it’s in the $325 million range.

The press release announcing the acquisition is filled with someincomprehensible jargon. Simply put, the buy-up will help an IT infrastructure giant like CSC work with clients who are running applications on different clouds. Increasingly, we’re seeing companies adopt a flexible, hybrid cloud approach.

In August, CSC bought data management startup InfoChimps, which suggests that the company is ramping up its M&A and is keeping a close eye on fast-growing enterprise startups.

This is the second business software acquisition announced in the past 30 minutes. Neustar just revealed that it has acquired Aggregate Knowledge for $119 in cash consideration.

Venture Beat

Read more »

¿Google engulle y elude la ley Sherman?

How Google dodged anti-trust law to buy Waze

By Tim Fernholz @timfernholz

Is this social map a Google competitor? AP Photo/Virginia Mayo

When Google, king of the mobile maps, shelled out $1 billion to buy Israeli social mapping company Waze, the first question for many was: Where’s the anti-trust ruling?

After all, Google is a leading digital maps provider, and Waze was one of the few innovators actually catching up with fellow digital cartographers Nokia, Apple and Microsoft. An American consumer watchdog wrote (pdf) to the US Department of Justice (DOJ) noting that the acquisition would “remove the most viable competitor to Google Maps in the mobile space.” The watchdog quoted the company’s CEO telling reporters “we’re the only reasonable competition to [Google].”

As of now, Google isn’t under any government scrutiny. But consumer pressure and probable complaints from competitors like Facebook, which also considered a bid for Waze, are bound to change that. Google may have also invited scrutiny by pushing the limits of a loophole in the reporting requirements of anti-trust law.

When one company acquires another, it typically needs to file a form notifying anti-trust authorities at DOJ or the Federal Trade Commission. But Google, according to law professor Steven Davidoff, relied on an exemption for foreign companies that earn or possess sales and assets worth less than $70.9 million in the US. While this is technically true of Waze, Davidoff and consumer advocates think that valuing the company at $1 billion means its US intellectual property is at least worth more than the minimum for anti-trust consideration.

Part of the challenge will be figuring out how to define the market for digital maps, which affects Google-Waze’s market share: Does Google-Waze compete just with other smartphone maps, or directly with Rand McNally’s paper atlas, or Garmin’s standalone GPS units? Is the market limited to products offering turn-by-turn directions, which would put the combined Google-Waze deal behind Telenav in terms of market share, at least in the US? Does the service only compete with other social maps that are driven by user data?

These questions will form the groundwork of any battle over the Waze acquisition. If the government does investigate and find that Google’s move was anti-competitive, it could force the company to share more data with competitors, restrict how Google integrates the two companies, or even unwind the deal entirely.

But Google was on its toes. By moving ahead of the government and not filing for review in advance, Google may have made the deal harder for authorities to pursue; they’re less likely to block a sale that’s already happened.

http://qz.com/95974

Read more »

Stratays compra a su competidor

Stratasys just acquired MakerBot, the one 3D printing firm that could have disrupted it

By Christopher Mims @mims

Turns out that giving people the ability to 3D print random tchotchkes is worth about $600 million.

You can’t 3D print money, but Stratasys just did the next best thing in buying MakerBot, the one company with the potential to disrupt Stratasys’s 3D-printing business.

The deal will be transacted entirely in Stratasys stock, and the initial acquisition price is 4.76 million shares (worth $403 million today). Depending on MakerBot’s performance, an additional 2.38 million shares could be exchanged as part of the acquisition, yielding a total acquisition value of $604 million. Stratasys is up 3.3% in after-hours trading.

MakerBot’s revenue was $11.5 million in the first quarter of 2013, so a valuation of $604 million represents an impressive multiple. But it’s not an outrageous price considering that MakerBot, with its relatively inexpensive but capable 3D printers, was already eating into Stratasys’s existing business, and in time could have represented a significant disruptive threat.

“MakerBot is giving Z Corp and Stratasys a run for their money,” said Will Gibbs, founder of manufacturing automation firm Corvus and Columba and a 9-year veteran of the 3D printing industry. “They can’t sell their $50,000 machines anymore that are equivalent to MakerBot’s” in their capabilities.

Indeed, side-by-side comparisons of MakerBot’s Replicator and Replicator 2 printers and Stratasys’s cheapest 3D printer, the Mojo, show the Replicator coming out ahead by all measures, despite the fact that the Mojo costs $10,000 and the Replicator is just $2,200. This has led some veterans of the 3D printing industry to wonder, perhaps hyperbolically, how Stratasys would survive in a world full of MakerBot Repilcators and the vast open-source community that supports them.

In acquiring MakerBot, Stratasys isn’t merely capitalizing on all the hype that MakerBot and its charismatic founder, Bre Pettis, have managed to generate for 3D printing. MakerBot managed to make itself an attractive, even necessary, acquisition by following a script familiar to many disruptive 21st-century technology companies: Start with an inexpensive system and refine it over generations until it competes with higher-end technology, but at a much lower price.

http://qz.com/96109

Read more »

Microsoft hace pie en Barnes & Noble

Microsoft to Take Stake in Nook Unit of Barnes & Noble

BY MICHAEL J. DE LA MERCED

Mike Spencer/Wilmington Star News, via Associated PressBarnes & Noble bookstores prominently feature displays of Nook e-readers.

Microsoft announced on Monday that it would invest $300 million in Barnes & Noble’s Nook division for a 17.6 percent stake. The deal values the e-reader business at $1.7 billion.

The move by Microsoft will help bolster the standing of Barnes & Noble’s fastest-growing unit. The bookstore giant had said earlier this year that it was exploring strategic options for the business, including a potential divestiture or strategic partnership.

The company has wagered heavily on the Nook, whose e-readers and tablets compete against Amazon’s best-selling Kindle devices in the hotly contested world of electronic books.

Both companies are spending heavily to maintain a foothold in light of Apple’s success with the iPad.

The Nook division’s growth has come at enormous financial cost, weighing down on Barnes & Noble’s bottom line and prompting the strategic review. The retailer added on Monday that it was still weighing other options for the business.

Through the deal, the two companies will settle their patent disputes, and Barnes & Noble will produce a Nook e-reading application for the forthcoming Windows 8 operating system, which will run on traditional computers and tablets.

The new division, which has yet to be renamed, will also include Barnes & Noble’s college business. It is meant to help the business compete in what many expect to be a growth area for e-books: the education market, something that Apple has already set its sights on.

The new company and “our relationship with Microsoft are important parts of our strategy to capitalize on the rapid growth of the Nook business, and to solidify our position as a leader in the exploding market for digital content in the consumer and education segments,” William J. Lynch Jr., Barnes & Noble’s chief executive, said in a statement.

NYT

Read more »