**Editor’s Note: Please click here for a look back at the biggest channel-impacting mergers and acquisitions from 2017.**

Just one week into the new year and M&A activity is already well underway.

Among the wheelers and dealers is Arrow Electronics, which just signed an agreement to acquire San Jose, California-based eInfochips, a global, 20+-year-old product engineering and managed services company.

Arrow’s Michael Long

The distributor says eInfochips will expand Arrow’s IoT “sensor to sunset” platform by adding engineering, solution architecture, embedded software development, security, mobile-device connectivity, app development, cloud configuration and management, and managed services including big-data analytics.

“Upon close of this acquisition, eInfochips advances our IoT strategy, expands our offerings, and moves us into the rapidly growing IoT services market. As a result, we will deliver complex and connected IoT solutions and technologies across multiple cloud platforms,” said Michael J. Long, chairman, president and chief executive officer of Arrow. “This acquisition adds over 1,500 IoT solution architects, engineers and software-development resources to Arrow’s already leading position in IoT design services.”

Business investments in the Internet of Things took root in 2017, with 2018 seen as the beginning of when IoT goes mainstream. IDC reports that worldwide spending on IoT will reach $772 billion this year, an increase of 14.6 percent over the $674 billion spent in 2017. Looking further out, IDC predicts that worldwide IoT spending will sustain a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 14.4 percent through 2021, ultimately surpassing $1 trillion in 2020, and reaching $1.1 trillion in 2021.

“Arrow has redefined design engineering with our … eDesign digital platform. Customers now collaborate on Arrow.com with hundreds of online-enabled engineers. Our engineers help customers with online reference designs, cloud-based design tools, and our eDesign platform,” said Matt Anderson, chief digital officer of Arrow. “Connecting eInfochips’ IoT capabilities and engineers to our eDesign platform will substantially augment the scale of eInfochips’ services, delivered via digital tools, to Arrow’s 125,000 customers.”

Tim Curran, CEO of the Global Technology Distribution Council (GTDC), has noted that distributors have invested millions of dollars to develop IoT relationships and solutions, and that partners should turn to their distribution partners for guidance on building an IoT practice.

eInforchips, in business since 1994, recently noted that 60 percent of its revenue comes from Fortune 500 companies and 80 percent from solutions based on connected devices.

The transaction is expected to close later this month.