Discover the purchase of companies most relevant in the Internet of Things sector in 2018. This entry highlights the double acquisition made by Altair Engineering in a short period of time or the billionaire purchase of Fortive, among others.
Identiva global provider of physical security and secure identification, has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Thursby Software in early November. Its products, software, systems and services address the markets for physical and logical access control, video analytics and a wide range of RFID-enabled applications.
The Californian company has customers in a variety of industries including government, education, healthcare, banking, retail and transportation. Identiv's mission is to secure the connected physical world: from the perimeter to desktop access, and from the world of physical things to the Internet of Everything (IoE).
Thursby is a provider of mobile security software based in Arlington, Texas. It has sold more than one million software licenses to a wide range of customers and industries, including government, healthcare, finance, energy, education, research, Fortune 500, Global 2000 and OEMs.
The acquisition is expected to strengthen Identiv's identity offerings with comprehensive solutions for a logical access, secure and convenient via smart cards and derived credentials on mobile devices. "This combination substantially strengthens our position as a trusted provider of high security solutions for government and enterprise customers," said Steven Humphreys, CEO of Identiv.
These capabilities have enabled more than 100,000 Department of Defence and federal government employees, including the US Navy Reserve, to use personal mobile devices to access needed information.
11 September Fortive finally acquired the company Accruent to the private equity firm Genstar Capital. The transaction has been completed after being announced in October and has added a approximate amount of 2 trillion dollars in cash.
Fortive is a manufacturer of industrial products and its portfolio of IoT technologies includes a wide range of sensors, automation and field solutions.
James A. Lico, CEO of Fortive, said Accruent's software assets have strong cross-selling capabilities across the IoT asset management market. "The complementary strengths of Accruent, Gordian and Fluke Digital Systems will create an industry-leading IoT portfolio. This will consist of connected devices, software-enabled workflows and data analytics," he argued.
Founded in 1995, Accruent is a global software company that helps organisations achieve superior performance by transforming the way they manage their physical resources. It employs more than 1,100 employees and its solutions are used by more than 10,000 global customers in a wide range of industries. Under Genstar's two-year ownership, the company will doubled revenuessuccessfully completed nine acquisitions and rapidly expanded the international growth.
Genstar Capital is a leading private equity firm that has been actively investing in high-quality companies for 30 years. Based in San Francisco, it works in partnership with its management teams and network of strategic advisors to transform its portfolio companies into industry-leading companies. It currently has $10 billion of assets under management and targets investments in specific segments of the software, industrial technology, healthcare and financial services industries.
Altair (Troy, Michigan) transforms design and decision-making by applying simulation, machine learning and optimisation across product lifecycles. It has 71 offices in 24 countries and 2,000 employees on payroll, serving more than 5,000 customers across broad industry segments.
In a short period of time, it has confirmed two acquisitions in the Internet of Things sector. They are as follows:
On 5 November it was announced that Altair had signed a deal whereby Altair agreed to acquire Datawatch. Under the terms of the agreement, Altair will pay 13,10 dollars per share in cash, representing a fully diluted equity value of approximately USD 176 million.
Datawatch (Bedford, Massachusetts), is the data intelligence provider with market-leading enterprise data visualisation and predictive analytics solutions. Datawatch positions people and organisations to master all data, regardless of source, format or narrative, which equates to faster time to insight. Thousands of organisations of all sizes in over 100 countries use its products, with offices in New York, London, Toronto, Stockholm, Singapore and Manila.
James Scapa, CEO of Altair, commented: "Bringing Datawatch to Altair should result in a powerful offering that is consistent with our vision of transforming product design and decision making through the application of simulation, data science and optimisation throughout product life cycles.
Altair has confirmed the purchase of the Canadian company Simsolid on October 17th of this year. Simsolid works on full fidelity CAD (Computer Aided Design) assemblies to provide fast and accurate structural simulation. They were founded after asking the question "why does the geometry used in the structural design and simulation worlds have to be so different?"
"We believe Simsolid is a revolutionary technological breakthrough that will have a profound impact on product design and for our industry," said James Scapa. "Simsolid controls the accuracy of the solution through adaptive multi-pass analysis, which makes it extremely fast and memory efficient. Large and complex assemblies can be solved quickly even on laptops," he added.
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