Social Market Consolidation – It’s Here
In case you haven’t been paying attention, the Social Media/Marketing marketspace is starting to consolidate – rapidly. What’s driving this consolidation is M&A activity by the large cap market leaders, most notably Salesforce.com who is apparently about to purchase Buddy Media for more than $800M. This follows Oracle’s just-announced $300M acquisition of Vitrue. Salesforce started [...]
Consolidation in the Outsourcing and Consulting spaces
Image via Wikipedia Last week, I discussed the Booz & Co./A.T. Kearney merger that didn’t go through and why deals like that are sometimes problematic. This week, we learn that Hewitt is being acquired for $4.9 billion by AON. The Wall Street Journal reports that: – Deloitte LLP is looking for acquisitions – PriceWaterhouseCoopers LLP [...]
Hewitt into AON: a sad, bad day for HR Outsourcing
Waking up this morning to hear the news of Hewitt’s acquisition by AON signalled a sad, bad day for HR Outsourcing. The HRO industry is now consolidating faster than any of us imagined… forget ADP/Workscape, this is BIG – and leaves the global HRO market with three major global HRO enterprise-level providers – IBM, NGA and [...]
Marketing Automation Consolidation?
Many VC’s and other practitioners of the Art of Startup view consolidation as a normal part of the evolution of a market. At first there are lots of companies founded in a space and lots of hype. Over time, a handful emerge as leaders. Once the handful is obviously head and shoulders above the rest, [...]
Will SAP be acquired?
Will SAP be acquired? Reader poll says yes by a 2 to 1 margin, but a thoughtful analysis casts doubt on this notion.
SFDC Acquisiton Spree?
This just in: Salesforce to raise $500M in debt. It’s about time the SaaS world did some acquiring, and Salesforce.com is the logical playa to start. That $500M may be just to war chest to get started down the path. Larry Dignan concurs. Who would they acquire? Would they acquire someone not SaaS? Wouldn’t make [...]
Gartner buys Burton and the Analyst Consolidation Question
With the news that Gartner is buying The Burton Group today, the topic of IT analyst consolidations is popping up again. While I’ve only been in the analyst world for 4 years now (come Feb 2010), working at a small firm has given me, I wager, more of a view into the machinations of the [...]
