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Cloud Communications: December 22, 2011 eNewsletter
December 22, 2011

2011 Was a Year for Cloud Acquisition: News Report

By Ed Silverstein, TMCnet Contributor

Looking back at 2011, Verizon’s acquisition of Terremark Worldwide (News - Alert) was one of the top five cloud deals of the year.




So says Jeffrey Schwartz in his blog on Redmond Channel Partner – where he comes up with a list of the five significant cloud deals made during 2011.

Verizon (News - Alert) Communications paid $1.4 billion for Terremark Worldwide. Terremark provides managed hosting and cloud services for large businesses and government offices.

“The move gave Verizon instant credibility as a provider of enterprise cloud services,” Schwartz said in his recent report. “Verizon Communications President and CEO Lowell McAdam said, ‘it made more sense to acquire a leading provider of cloud infrastructure services than building out datacenters throughout the world.’”

Terremark is now a subsidiary of Verizon. Earlier this month, Terremark named Nelson Fonseca president of the company, according to TMCnet. Fonseca was chief operating officer of Terremark prior to the new assignment.

In another deal highlighted by Schwartz, CenturyLink acquired Savvis for $2.5 billion. Savvis is now part of CenturyLink’s managed hosting unit.  CenturyLink runs 48 datacenters in North America, Europe and Asia – after the acquisition. It has a domestic 207,000-mile fiber network and an international network of 190,000 miles. In October, Savvis launched Savvis Symphony Database, a cloud-based database platform, reported TMCnet.

In one respect, that of enterprise social media, Salesforce.com’s (News - Alert) deal for Radian6 was important, too. Salesforce.com purchased Radian6 for $326 million. Radian6’s Engagement Console lets users find out what comments are being made about them on Facebook, Twitter and on blogs. “This sophisticated search engine is important for organizations that are concerned about their reputations,” Schwartz said, adding that Salesforce.com and other companies will continue to expand into enterprise social networking during 2012. In addition, TMCnet commented last month that Salesforce’s new Social Marketing Cloud, powered by Radian6, combines social media with marketing “by leveraging new functionality across social monitoring, insights, engagements, workflows and websites.”

“As a result, companies can transform the millions of social conversations occurring about their brand, products and industry into active engagements that will in turn cultivate customer relationships,” said TMCnet’s Tammy Wolf.

Another important deal in 2011 singled out by Schwartz was when Oracle decided to purchase RightNow Technologies (News - Alert) for $1.5 billion. Its cloud-based Customer Service Cloud product is used by 2,000 organizations, according to a company statement carried on TMCnet.

And earlier this month, SAP (News - Alert) said it will get SuccessFactors for $3.4 billion. SuccessFactors provides cloud-based solutions for human resources management, according to Schwartz.

Looking back at the past year – and all of these “noteworthy” deals – Schwartz said that “It's no surprise that some of the largest IT vendors shelled out big bucks to gain ground in 2011” as “some pioneers in cloud computing” are now part of “established vendors.”

It comes as little surprise, too, that Schwartz predicts more acquisitions in the cloud computing sector during 2012.


Ed Silverstein is a TMCnet contributor. To read more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.

Edited by Tammy Wolf

(source: http://it.tmcnet.com/topics/it/articles/248312-2011-a-year-cloud-acquisition-news-report.htm)








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