In 2019, five BI software vendors were acquired or merged. Most of this activity came in fairly rapid succession in less than a month, starting in mid-May 2019, when four vendors were acquired or merged:
- Qlik acquired Attunity on February 21 for $560 million in cash
- Sisense acquired Periscope Data on May 14 (terms not disclosed)
- Google Cloud acquired Looker on June 6 for $2.6 billion in cash
- Salesforce acquired Tableau on June 10 for stock valued at $15.7 billion at the time of announcement (the most ever paid for an analytics software company)
- Logi Analytics acquired Zoomdata on June 10 (terms not disclosed)
The acquisitions of Looker and Tableau are highly significant because of both the prices paid (and valuations received) as well as marking a major expansion of tech giants Google and Salesforce in the BI and analytics market.
- Although Dresner Advisory Services expects additional vendor consolidation will occur and that these transactions will continue to change the market, the focus of this Research Insight is not to prognosticate about which other companies will be buyers or sellers or what valuations companies deserve.
- This report, instead, provides context and practical advice—based on information distilled from user insights provided in Dresner Advisory Services research, as well as through the #BIWisdom Tweetchat community—for best navigating and surviving a now quickly evolving BI software landscape.
- Areas to which organizations should pay attention and potentially take action include product, support, pricing and licensing, staffing, and communities. We provide details on actions to consider for these areas in the Recommendations section of this report.