Even as the managed services market grows, consolidation among platform providers, MSPs and vendors continues to accelerate. Keep track of merger and acquisition (M&A) information, company valuations and key alliances isn’t easy. That’s why we launched the MSPmentor M&A Tracker. Here, you’ll find the latest M&A information, including links to acquiring companies’ Web sites.
Managed service providers remain in a buying mood, and continue to gobble each other up. And now, private equity investors are joining the action. The latest three examples: Key Methods purchased Enterprise Systems Inc.; Evolve IP acquired Lyrio IP Technology Solutions; and Wachovia Capital Partners has snapped up HostMySite in a private equity deal.
The HostMySite deal is particularly interesting, since Wachovia Capital Partners’ parent is in financial turmoil at the moment. You can follow these and other deals by reading our MSPmentor M&A Tracker, which has spotted more than a dozen managed services-related acquisitions this year.
Here’s a bit more on each of the three latest deals:
I’m packing my bags and heading to the Kaseya User Conference in Las Vegas, which runs June 1-3. On the one hand, I expect to hear plenty of “Kaseya” centric news at the event. But I will also be digging deeper, meeting with managed service providers and corporate IT leaders, to hear about their experiences and learnings in the managed services market. Here are five trends or themes I’ll be exploring.
If you’re a managed service provider that’s seeking potential investor dollars — or if you simply want to promote your business momentum — perhaps you should steal a page from mindSHIFT Technologies. The MSP acquired a software as a service (SaaS) specialist in April, and is now stepping into the spotlight at Capital Connection 2008, a major investor conference this week in Baltimore, Md.
Capital Connection positions itself as “the region’s premier event that brings together the country’s most prominent investors with leading-edge technology companies.” The event hosts start-up, early stage, expansion-stage and later-stage private growth companies.
Look at the concise way that mindSHIFT describes its focus to event attendees, and you’ll find an MSP that really understands its niche.
The pace of mergers and acquisitions in the managed services market seems to be accelerating. Our MSPmentor M&A Tracker now lists 10 such deals this year — and we suspect there are dozens more that we’ve yet to hear about.
Give our MSPmentor M&A Tracker a look and please let us know if there are any deals we’ve overlooked or should add to the list. You can alert us by posting a comment below or by emailing MSPmentor Editorial Director Joe Panettieri (joe [at] ninelivesmediainc.com).
Admittedly, some deals listed on the M&A Tracker aren’t pure MSP acquisitions, but each deal did have a managed services component attached to it.
Vertical market solutions providers are opening their wallets to acquire managed service providers. The latest example: PHNS, a solution provider to the healthcare vertical, has purchased AmeriVault — which specializes in online data backup and recovery services.
This is the 10th MSP-centric buyout we’ve spotted this year, and the second this week. Here’s some analysis of the PHNS-AmeriVault deal, and the fast-evolving MSP acquisition market.
Jeff Kaplan, a SaaS and managed services thought leader at Think IT Services, has some pretty strong opinions about Hewlett-Packard’s buyout of Electronic Data Systems.
I think Jeff and I are on the same page. HP gains new scale and little overlap by acquiring EDS. On Tuesday I pointed out that EDS doesn’t do much — if anything — for HP’s SaaS and managed services efforts.
But Jeff uses far more direct language when describing HP’s SaaS and managed services shortcomings so far.
It’s a question I get asked all the time: How much is a managed service provider (MSP) business worth, and what metrics should MSPs use to set their company valuations?
I still don’t have an exact answer for readers, but here are some clues based on anecdotal info I’ve gathered plus Hewlett-Packard’s buyout of Electronic Data Systems (EDS). Read More >
Call it a technology paradox: Even as the managed services market grows rapidly, it also consolidates through mergers and acquisitions. The latest such deal involves two Cisco Systems partners — ePlus and Network Architects — getting together to better target commercial customers.
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