Splunk Decides to Buy AIOps Start-Up SignalFx for $1.05 Billion

AIOps and Log Management company- Splunk, has announced signing a definitive agreement to acquire SignalFx for $1.05 billion. SignalFx is a SaaS leader in real-time monitoring and metrics for Cloud infrastructure, microservices, and applications. With this acquisition, Splunk is expected to further enhance its leadership stance in the ITOM and an AIOps industry. SignalFx would enable Splunk developers to deliver observability and APM for organizations at every stage of their Cloud journey, starting from Cloud-native apps to homegrown On-Premises applications.

Recently, VMware also announced two major acquisition deals with Carbon Black and Pivotal Software to bolster Big Data-based ITOM and Security industry.

Currently, Splunk offers IT Monitoring and Diagnostics solutions within IoT and Business Analytics Cloud. These technologies eliminate the complex data silos by seamlessly integrating data across complex industrial data sources, sensors and application. SignalFx’s addition will help the CIOs fully take control of Cloud and DevOps with the “only solution designed for every stage of the Cloud-Native journey.”

Marketing Technology News: Daily MarTech Roundup: The 5 Coolest Things in Marketing and Sales Today

Founded in 2013 by Karthik Rau and Phillip Lau, SignalFx has raised $75 million in their Series A-E funding rounds, backed by investors General Catalyst, CRV, Andreessen Horowitz and Tiger Global Management. Interesting, Splunk is only 7-8 years older to SignalFx and has crunched $40 million in its Series A- IPO rounds. In 2012, Splunk went Public with a $1.56 billion evaluation, raising $229.5 million.

According to Gartner, “By 2022, more than 75% of global organizations will be running containerized applications in production, which is a significant increase from fewer than 30% today.”

Customers will be able to use Splunk and SignalFx technology to deploy applications in the Cloud, On-Premises, or in hybrid environments and get real-time observability and response across all of these systems with a single interconnected platform.

Marketing Technology News: Amazon Announces 150 New Tools and Services Have Launched in 2019 to Help Small and Medium-Sized Businesses Grow Their Online Sales

In its official press release, Splunk acknowledged this breadth of innovation will help customers deliver cost savings, increased revenue and improved customer experience, and firmly places Splunk as the vendor most qualified to deliver these outcomes across the entire suite of enterprise applications at any scale.

Under the terms of the agreement, Splunk will acquire SignalFx for a total purchase price of approximately $1.05 billion. This deal is expected to close in the second half of fiscal 2020, subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory reviews.

Before SignalFX, Splunk had acquired 8 other organizations, including BugSense and Cloudmeter (in 2013), Metafor and Caspida ( in 2015), SignalSense (2017), Phantom (in 2018), VictorOps and KryptonCloud (2018).

AI Technology RADAR: Shaking the IT Foundations with AIOps- Part 1

Currently, Splunk is competing with the other Cloud giants such as BMC Software, CA Technologies, and ServiceNow.

Splunk-SignalFx Combination to Empower CIOs Build AI-Based Cloud-First Secured IT Frameworks

At the time of this announcement, Doug Merritt, President and CEO, Splunk, said —

“Data fuels the modern business, and the acquisition of SignalFx squarely puts Splunk in position as a leader in monitoring and observability at massive scale. SignalFx will support our continued commitment to giving customers one platform that can monitor the entire enterprise application lifecycle. We are also incredibly impressed by the SignalFx team and leadership, whose expertise and professionalism are a strong addition to the Splunk family.”

“By joining Splunk, we will create a powerful monitoring platform – one ready to support CIOs whether they have fully embraced Cloud or have existing applications in the data center,” said Karthik Rau, Founder and CEO, SignalFx.

Marketing Technology News: LinkedIn Announces New Centralized Hub for Actionable Marketing Insights

Karthik added, “As the world continues to move towards complex, Cloud-first architectures, Splunk and SignalFx is the new approach needed to monitor and observe Cloud-native infrastructure and applications in real time, whether via logs, metrics or tracing. The SignalFx team is thrilled to join Splunk to help CIOs capitalize upon the modern application portfolio.”

Real-Time Monitoring of Any Data at Any Scale

Business is evolving at a speed that requires new approaches for software development, deployment, and monitoring. Cloud-native technologies such as microservices, containers, orchestrated environments like Docker and Kubernetes, and serverless functions are fueling business outcomes not anticipated just a few years ago as data volumes continue to grow exponentially. At the same time, they introduce unique challenges to IT professionals and developers tasked with ensuring high availability and seamless operations.

This is partly why IDC, “continues to expect that SaaS-based solutions (in APM) will grow at triple the rate of on-premises solutions over the next five years…”

The combination of Splunk and SignalFx will give IT and developers a data platform that allows them to monitor and observe data in real-time, no matter the infrastructure or data volume, helping them cut costs, boost revenue and improve the customer experience. This enables organizations to work across their entire data landscape, not just silos in the data center or Cloud-native environments.

Explaining the financial aspect of the deal, Jason Child, Chief Financial Officer, Splunk, added, “The strength of our balance sheet allows us to pay the majority of purchase price consideration with cash on hand. Total equity consideration plus initial SignalFx employee retention incentives will result in less than three percent total dilution from this transaction. Post-closing, we expect to absorb the acquired operational expenses of SignalFx within our existing plan. At this time, we are reaffirming our full year non-GAAP operating margin target,” he continued.

Marketing Technology News: Amazon Announces 150 New Tools and Services Have Launched in 2019 to Help Small and Medium-Sized Businesses Grow Their Online Sales