The Biggest M&A of March-April 2016

• The Biggest M&A of March-April 2016

  Verizon. Frontier. CenturyLink. XO Communications. Mitel. IBM.

  Those telecom and IT giants were only a handful of the companies making waves either for announcing or closing big acquisitions — or for the challenges they’re facing in the aftermath of those announcements.

  Our one-stop slide show doesn’t include every merger and acquisition in telecom and IT from March and April, but it offers up some of the biggest from the past two months that will make waves in the channel going forward.

  Looking for more M&A? Our breakdown from January and February, is here.

  Follow senior online managing editor Craig Galbraith on Twitter.

• Biggest M&A of March-April: Introduction

  

• Biggest M&A of March-April: CenturyLink-netAura

  

  netAura focuses on engineering, developing and consulting on managed security technologies. The Herndon, Virginia-based company has worked extensively with U.S. government agencies and corporations on cybersecurity, security information and event management (SIEM), analytics and vulnerability management since it was founded in 2011. Financial details regarding CenturyLink‘s acquisition were not disclosed.

   

  Read the full story here.

• Biggest M&A of March-April: Mitel-Polycom

  

  Mitel announced plans to acquire Polycom for nearly $2 billion in cash and stock. Mitel cited a period of intense change – and competition – in the communications and collaboration industry as vendors infringe on one another’s traditional turfs and startups seek to redefine collaboration. Execs say the combined company will leverage Mitel’s global communications business to advance Polycom’s conference and video collaboration portfolio.

   

  Learn more about Mitel’s Polycom buy here.

• Biggest M&A of March-April: Verizon-XO Contract Concerns

  

  Verizon’s pending $1.8 billion purchase of XO Communications’ fiber-optic network business has XO’s master agents worried about the future of their contracts.

   

  “It’s disappointing to not have any substantive information about what will happen to XO, to our ability to take care of our customers placed through XO, or what will happen to the commissions we’ve built up over the past two decades,” said Intelisys co-founder Rick Dellar.

   

  An XO spokesperson would only tell Channel Partners that “… during the approval process, XO will continue to … maintain the highest quality service standards for our customers. We remain committed to our partners.”

   

  Click here for more on this controversy.

• Biggest M&A of March-April: Brocade-Ruckus Wireless

  

  Brocade is acquiring Ruckus Wireless in a cash and stock transaction worth about $1.5 billion. The two parties says the combined company will be No. 1 in storage-area networking, No. 1 in service provider Wi-Fi, No. 2 in data-center networking, No. 3 in enterprise wireless LAN, and No. 3 in enterprise edge networking in the U.S. and EMEA. The companies expect the transaction to close in Brocade’s third fiscal quarter of 2016.

   

  See what all the “Ruckus” is about here.

• Biggest M&A of March-April: TelePacific-DSCI

  

  TelePacific is acquiring DSCI, the Massachusetts-based managed services provider, to expand its capabilities and reach to a nationwide audience. Focusing on California, Nevada and Texas, TelePacific delivers managed services and business communications to 75,000 locations for customers ranging from small businesses to enterprises with hundreds of sites. With the addition of DSCI, nearly half of TelePacific’s business will be in managed services and include a complete set of products, including over-the-top UC and managed IT services.

   

  Click here to learn more about TelePacific’s big buy.

• Biggest M&A of March-April: Birch-Primus Canada

  

  Birch Communications’ purchase of Primus Telecommunications Canada is the company’s first international expansion, making it possible for Birch to serve customers across the U.S.-Canada border. Birch plans to continue to use the Primus brand for its consumer business and will expand the Birch brand into Canada for business customers. The companies have complementary product portfolios, each offering broadband Internet, cloud-hosted PBX, dedicated data access, local phone, long distance and a variety of wholesale solutions.

   

  Click here to read more about this international expansion.

• Biggest M&A of March-April: Charter-TWC Almost Complete

  

  Charter Communications got clearance from the Department of Justice to wrap its $78 billion acquisition of Time Warner Cable, the second-largest U.S. cable company, and its related acquisition of Bright House Networks. The FCC Commissioner also gave his nod. Approval of the cable mega-merger comes with conditions, since the government filed an antitrust lawsuit over concerns that the new company would have a greater incentive to impose restrictions on programmers. The cablecos in the channel have long argued they don’t compete against one another; master agents we’ve talked with generally have supported the consolidation.

   

  Learn more about the merger approval process here.

• Biggest M&A of March-April: Frontier-Verizon

  

  Frontier wrapped its acquisition of Verizon wireline operations in California, Florida and Texas. Services there are provided to residential, commercial and wholesale customers. Chris Gellos, Frontier’s vice president of alternate channels, told us at the Channel Partners Conference & Expo that “we’re getting some pretty metropolitan dense areas in these properties that we’re acquiring … so it’s expanding our footprint dramatically.” This is Frontier’s fourth major acquisition since 2008, including a previous network deal with Verizon.

   

  Read our full interview with Gellos here.

• Biggest M&A of March-April: Juniper-BTI Systems

  

  Silicon Valley-based Juniper first announced the acquisition in January. Jonathan Davidson, executive vice president and general manager, Juniper Development and Innovation, said it “marks an exciting time for our companies, our customers and our partners.” BTI’s portfolio complements Juniper’s IP and Ethernet services with a “richer set of optical capabilities, optical network management and automation software.”

   

  This is where to find the full story on Juniper’s acquisition.

• Biggest M&A of March-April: IBM-Bluewolf

  

  The acquisition of Bluewolf will help expand IBM’s analytics and consulting businesses. Bluewolf Group is a partner of Salesforce and a provider of cloud consulting and implementation. Bluewolf will become part of IBM Global Business Services, specifically, in its Interactive Experience practice. The companies announced the acquisition plans March 31.

   

  Click here to learn more about this deal.

• Biggest M&A of March-April: Cisco-Jasper

  

  Cisco said the now completed acquisition of Jasper will take advantage of a strong cloud-based Internet of Things (IoT) service platform and help Cisco take the next step in cloud IoT. Some offerings in the IoT service platform include usage-based insurance for connected cars, asset tracking for commercial fleet management and predictive maintenance for manufacturing. Jasper will form Cisco’s new IoTCloud Business Unit.

   

  More about Cisco’s cloud IoT strategy is here.

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• The Biggest M&A of March-April 2016

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