24 M&As in Storage Industry at Mid-Year 2017
Low historical figure but perfectly in phase with 2016 (48 for year)
By Jean Jacques Maleval | June 21, 2017 at 2:40 pmSince 1998 we analyze the merger and acquisition trends in the worldwide storage industry, which has allowed us the proper perspective from which to gauge the evolution over time.
At mid-year 2017, there were 24 M&As in the worldwide storage industry to be compared to a total of 48 in 2016, the pace being exactly the same.
In 2016, the average price of an acquisition was $754 million when the figure was known for 14 deals. Since the beginning or the year, total amount is $2.7 billion for 6 deals or an average of much lower $447 million.
Since last January the record is $1,090 million for the acquisition of Nimble Storage by HPE. It was $5,900 million that was put on the table by Broadcom to get Brocade last year.
Only one firm, NetApp, bought more than one company: small Immersive Partner Solutions and Plexistor. And, as in 2016, absolutely no one by leader Dell EMC, this latter being known as the most voracious in the industry with 81 acquisitions since 1994.
In 2006, there was a record of 104 M&As. Since 2012, the number of deals decreased yearly to reach 48 in 2016 compared to 51 the former year, and 65 being the average per year since 1998. The lowest figure was 45 in 2002.
The consolidation in the industry will continue, but at a slow pace, because some publicly-traded companies are in bad shape and there are too many storage start-ups trying to survive with only two goals: to be acquired or die.
Furthermore a trend is not going to stop: storage giants invent about nothing in new killing storage technologies and prefer to get them by acquiring start-ups. It’s less expansive than investing in their own R&D.
We will probably continue to see several M&As in the most demanding storage sectors: cloud, software-defined software, hyperconverged system and SSD where there are too many companies, but also in the channel for consolidation.
Acquisitions From January to June 2017
Month | Buyer | Acquired company | Price in $ million | Activity of acquired company | |
1 | Proact IT | Teamix | 9.5 | Provider of technology and services in Germany | |
1 | j2 Global | Abaxio | NA | Cloud backup in USA | |
1 | Hewlett Packard Enterprise | SimpliVity | 650 | Software for hyperconverged infrastructure | |
1 | Sphere 3D | HVE and sister company Unified ConneXion | NA | Converged and hyperconverged infrastructure and IT services | |
1 | StorageCraft | Exablox | NA | Flash and HDD based scale-out NAS | |
1 | Endless Fund IV | MTI Europe | NA | Integrator in UK, Germany and France | |
1 | NXSN Acquisition | Nexsan (Imation) | NA | Disk arrays, NXSN Acquisition is affiliate of Spear Point Capital Management | |
1 | 1847 Partners | Cinram (European operations & business) | NA | Optical disc manufacturing and supply chain solutions | |
1 | Procurri | Congruity | NA | Provider of enterprise storage support for EMC, NetApp, HDS, Brocade and VMware | |
2 | Carbonite | Double-Take Software (Vision Solutions) | 65 | HA software for SMBs | |
2 | Datto | Open Mesh | NA | Cloud-managed Wi-Fi networks and SD-LAN | |
2 | Data Blue | LPS Integration | NA | VAR in cloud infrastructure, networking, security and storage architecture | |
2 | Veeco | Ultratech | 815 | Lithography, laser-processing and inspection systems | |
2 | Axway | Syncplicity | NA | Secure collaboration and file sharing | |
3 | Hewlett-Packard Enterprise | Nimble Storage | 1,090 | Hybrid and all-flash systems | |
3 | Betsol | Rebit software from Carbonite | NA | Backup solutions | |
3 | Extreme Networks | Broadcom (assets) | 55 | Brocade data center networking business | |
4 | AntemetA | C-Storage | NA | Data protection | |
4 | Insight Venture Partners | Spanning Cloud Apps | NA | Acquired from Dell EMC, in SaaS data protection | |
4 | Quantum Partners (Soros) | Violin Memory | NA | All-flash arrays | |
4 | Arcserve | FastArchiver | NA | Email archiving | |
5 | NetApp | Plexistor | NA | Software that turns off-the-shelf servers into high-performance converged infrastructure offerings with persistent memory technologies | |
5 | NetApp | Immersive Partner Solutions | NA | Cloud-based converged infrastructure monitoring and compliance | |
6 | Reactive Group | Arraid | NA | Replacement storage solutions for ageing disk, tape and floppy drives and revamping products using solid state technology |