M&A Update (#2448)

So many transactions. Companies are being bought and sold like a game of Go Fish.

Avaya sold its networking business to Extreme Networks for a paltry $100M (It is about $200M in revenue). That $100M does not make a dent in the billions in debt that Avaya is trying to scrape off in bankruptcy.

HPE is acquiring Nimble Storage for $1B.

LUMOS is being taken private by EQT Investment Startegy for almost a billion dollars. This comes following LUMOS buying three data center from DC74 and Clarity Communications, a fiber operator in NC.

FirstLight Fiber’s main PE owner, Oak Hill Capital Partners, has acquired Finger Lakes Technology Group in upstate NY to fill in its fiber route. The data centers, Cisco business and fiber network all go with FLTG to FLF. FirstLight recently announced similar transactions with Oxford Networks and Sovernet Communications.

Another RLEC was picked off by private money: “Hargray Communications has agreed to be sold to an investment group led by the Tom Pritzker Family Business Interests. Redwood Capital Investments and Stephens Capital Partners are also investors.

In other news, Amazon AWS launched some new Cloud-Based tools to help enterprises manage their call centers. They already built the tools for internal management of their own call centers, so now they are just leveraging more internal IT/tech for revenue.

8×8 is funny. They hire a banker and put up the for sale sign; then buy something. 8×8 acquired Sameroom, an inter-connection platform for various chat apps including Slack and Skype. ComputerWorld has a good article on the pivot of Sameroom and the 30 year history of 8×8.

Worth noting: “Today 8×8 introduced the world’s first Communications Cloud, which combines unified communications, team collaboration inter-operability, contact center, and analytics in a single, open and real-time platform. The company also announced a number of new business application integrations, aimed at enhancing business workflows by making real-time communications, collaboration capabilities and intelligence available for third-party cloud applications, all customizable via an Open Cloud approach to fit individual enterprise needs.” Note the words inter-op, analytics and integration. These will be the key to real UCaaS or UC&C or WCC (or whatever we call it next). These are the factors the separate the sale of UCaaS from Hosted VoIP. One is valuable, bringing productivity and business change. Hosted VoIP is just dial-tone replacement.

Today is International Women’s Day! I am recognizing it by re-posting my Women in Tech prezo from ITEXPO and an article on gender diversity from Fred Wilson.

Tags: 8×8, amazon, collaboration, data center, fiber, mergers, network management, rlec, UC, vc, women
Related tags: capital partners, business, communications, fiber, cloud, centers