Contact: Brenon Daly, Chris Hazelton
Two months ago, LANDesk Software switched from being a company that got bought to a company that does some buying of its own with the pickup of Managed Planet. (The old-line systems management vendor has had five owners in recent years.) LANDesk followed up that acquisition with another one earlier this week, reaching for mobile device management (MDM) vendor Wavelink. What’s more, the transaction is likely the largest one in the MDM sector so far.
Although terms weren’t disclosed, the deal triggered a Hart-Scott-Rodino (HSR) review, which would indicate that it is valued at more than the threshold level of $68m. (A source confirmed the HSR review of the transaction.) We understand that the price was actually closer to $90m, or about 4.5 times our estimated revenue for Wavelink of $20m. That would move LANDesk’s acquisition of Wavelink ahead of the sector’s previous big print, Symantec’s purchase of Odyssey Software. (Terms weren’t disclosed, but we estimate that Big Yellow paid $60m for its MDM partner Odyssey.)
As its own market segment, MDM emerged three years ago as iPhone and Android devices started popping up in offices and IT needed management tools since Research In Motion’s highly popular BlackBerry Enterprise Server did not support these devices at the time. Over the past 18 months, more than 80 vendors of varying sizes and sustainability have appeared to offer software and services to manage the ever-increasing number of smartphones and tablets.
That has tipped MDM toward commoditization, which is reflected in recent deal flow in the sector. For instance, big-name buyers such as Motorola Mobility, RIM and Numara have all done MDM deals valued at less than $10m, according to our estimates. However, there are a couple of medium-sized private MDM providers that are nearing breakeven and driving the evolution of this market to include application and data management.
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