Contact: Brenon Daly, Dennis Callaghan
With BMC Software reaching across the Atlantic this week for Tideway Systems, the Big Four systems management vendors are now four for four in terms of buying startups that do datacenter asset discovery and dependency mapping. The deal, which is the second acquisition by BMC in as many months, should help the company round out its datacenter management lineup. Although terms weren’t disclosed, we understand that BMC paid $30m for Tideway, which was running at about $15m in revenue. Tideway, which is based in London, had raised some $37.5m in backing, including a whopping $27m series C in April 2008.
Most of BMC’s other rivals had already inked deals in this market. In addition to the Big Four, other tech giants also picked up startups that had discovery and mapping technology. The deals started in mid-2004, when Mercury Interactive (now part of Hewlett-Packard) reached for Appilog. After that, a yearlong flurry of transactions starting in late 2005 saw pretty much all the big names make their play. IBM acquired Collation, Symantec reached for Relicore, EMC grabbed nLayers and CA Inc bought Cendura. Based on disclosed or estimated deal values, all the buyers during that period paid in the neighborhood of $50m for their respective discovery and mapping startups, roughly 40% more than we hear BMC handed over for Tideway. Look for a full report on the transaction in tonight’s MIS sendout.