Trending M&A: SolarWinds, Sangoma-Star2Star, BCM One

We witnessed our fair share of mergers and acquisitions in B2B technology last month.

For starters, Sangoma‘s acquisition of Star2Star made serious waves. Sangoma is shelling out $437 million to establish itself as a top tier cloud communications provider. BCM One also made a UCaaS play with its purchase of SkySwitch. And BullsEye Telecom is building its portfolio and geographical footprint with the purchase of a broadband aggregator.

The IT side of the channel stayed busy as well. SolarWinds announced a new name for its potential MSP spinoff, and IBM made two key announcements.

We observed several technology companies, such as High Wire Networks and Netwrix, characterizing their transactions as mergers.

The full list of transactions grew too long for us to include all of the stories. For example, Hornetsecurity purchased a Spanish cloud email security solutions provider, and Presidio extended its reach beyond North America with an acquisition. Also, security platform provider Huntress added an endpoint detection and response solution.

Scroll through the 11 images below to see the latest mergers and acquisitions that impacted the indirect technology sales channel.

Did you miss our previous M&A report? We covered December transactions in this gallery.

Sangoma

Sangoma's purchase of Star2Star will turn it into one of the world's top cloud communications providers.

The $437 million transaction puts two "complementary" portfolios together. Moreover, Sangoma CEO Bill Wignall said it helps realize Sangoma's journey to becoming a cloud services company.

"For many years, we have consciously pursued a strategy to transform Sangoma from a product business to one of the communications industry’s leading SaaS companies,” Wingall said.

Check out Edward Gately's article.

BCM One

BCM One acquired SkySwitch in an move that fills a gap in its portfolio.

The acquisition brings in SkySwitch's white-label UCaaS offering. SMB and midmarket customers can benefit from the solution, which uses the NetSapiens platform. In addition, the companies say they will not eliminate any locations or positions.

Read more about the transaction.

BullsEye 

BullsEye Telecom bought broadband aggregator Bandwave Systems.

The transaction gives BullsEye a more complete set of telecommunications services. Bandwave brings last-mile connectivity for customers with 25-1,000 locations. That's a good pairing for BullsEye, which focuses on multilocation communication services.

Read about the acquisition.

SolarWinds

The IT management software provider is rebranding its potential MSP spinoff. 

SolarWinds MSP now goes as N-able – a name from a company SolarWinds acquired years ago. SolarWinds has been discussing the possibility of spinning off its MSP firm into a new company.

Read about the rebrand and potential spinoff at Channel Futures.

Pax8

The cloud distributor bought a cloud hosting and consulting provider.

Pax8 announced the purchase of Wirehive, a U.K.-based company that partners with Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform and Amazon Web Services. Wirehive's CEO said Pax8 has created disruption that doesn't exist in the U.K. Executives also pointed to a culture match between the two companies.

Learn more about why Pax8 bought Wirehive.

F5

F5 Networks is buying Volterra and its distributed cloud services platform.

The approximately $500 million transaction will help F5's application security capabilities extend to the edge of the network. In addition, the companies share customers in common.

Get details on the purchase.

Atos

The IT services company bought a Canadian cybersecurity consulting firm.

Atos executives said In Fidem will position it as the third strongest cybersecurity services provider in the world. For one, Atos will bring on board 100-plus specialists from In Fidem. In addition, Atos and its partners can gain more of a foothold in the Canadian market.

Read about the benefits of the purchase, as well as Atos' expanded partnership with RingCentral.

High Wire

High Wire Networks and Spectrum Global Solutions are coming together in a cash and stock transaction.

Spectrum Global provides telecommunications engineering and infrastructure services, while High Wire provides wireless cable networking and electrical infrastructure solutions. The combined company will go public following the merger.

Learn about the merger.

Netwrix

The cybersecurity technology provider joined the list of companies announcing mergers.

Netwrix is merging with Stealthbits, but not saying for how much money.  As a result, the companies will come together under the Netwrix brand and offer a portfolio of seven offerings. Netwrix executives said they want to give their partners a complete set of products and services to meet their customers' security needs.

Get details on the merger.

IBM

The IT giant announced two M&A-related pieces of news.

First, IBM bought Taos, a Silicon Valley-based MSP and consultancy that will help it grow closer to the three main hyperscalers. In addition, IBM named Martin Schroeter as the CEO of NewCo, the managed services company that it is spinning off.

See the Channel Futures story.

Citrix

$2.25 billion. That's how much Citrix shelled out for Wrike.

Wrike provides a collaborative work management platform that Citrix executives hope will be complementary to the Citrix Workspace platform. The deal fits with projects that anticipate remote and hybrid work to remain a permanent trend in North America after the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I think [our] two organizations coming together gives us that ability to do that in a way that is very holistic and very differentiated from anybody else," Citrix's CEO said.

See the Channel Futures story Jeffrey Schwartz wrote.