This week’s news is filled with some major acquisitions as well as funding activities, followed up with some interesting reads and multimedia content. Overall, there’s plenty to unpack this time around, so let’s get going.
Table of Contents
News of the week
Zoom launches Hardware as a Service Program
With its soaring share price and usage, Zoom isn’t sitting on its laurels. The video conferencing software has just announced a partnership with ServiceNow for its Hardware-as-a-Service (HaaS) offering. As part of the program, it has partnered with DTEN, Neat, Poly, and Yealink to allow its customers who are using Zoom Phone or Zoom Rooms to get high-quality video conferencing equipment without the large upfront costs, and more importantly, the ability to get more if needed.
Microsoft Teams: reimagining virtual collaboration for the future of work and learning
Microsoft Teams has rolled out the Together mode that can help the video call participants feel more connected with each other along with reducing the video call fatigue. The features makes use of AI segmentation to bring the participants together in an auditorium-like environment (though the company will be adding more similar environments). In an addition to that, the company has also introduced Dynamic view, video filters along with promising to launch features such as Live reactions, support for PowerPoint Live Presentations, Chat bubbles, and more.
Oracle brings its full lineup of cloud services to data centers
Oracle is aiming to become a major player in the cloud services which is dominated by tech giants. And in a bid to do that, it has introduced the Dedicated Region Cloud@Customer, which lets the customer get the features of its public cloud services in its own data center. However, this isn’t cheap, as customers will need to have a minimum obligation of spending at least $500,000 a month for the three years. Instead of that, organizations can also opt for Oracle Autonomous Database on the Exadata Cloud@Customer service, which has a minimum obligation of spending $10,800 per month.
Acquisitions of the week
DocuSign continues agreement cloud expansion with Liveoak Technologies acquisition
Leading electronic signature software is bolstering the capabilities of DocuSign‘s Agreement Cloud with the purchase of Liveoak Technologies. The buyout was for $38million, and will help company to improve its eNotary offering. To recall, DocuSign bought Seal Software earlier this year, which was also to add to Agreement Cloud’s functionality.
Silver Lake acquires cloud-Based payroll and HR software specialist Silae
Investment firm Silver Lake has purchased the France-based Silae, a company offering payroll and HR software. Silae was founded in 2010, and currently helps over 550,000 businesses in France simply and automate complex processes.
Slack is adding to its capabilities to become the go-to choice for workplace communication. Just two weeks after launching Slack Connect, it has announced the acquisition of Rimeto, which builds an employee directory for companies with details like employees’ skills, experience, and current projects. While the feature will be integrated to Slack, it has also confirmed that Rimeto will continue to work as a standalone app too.
Related watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8E10n2A6Mg
BrowserStack has acquired Percy
Percy, an automated visual testing and review software, has been bought by BrowserStack. The Mumbai-based BrowserStack is among the leading players in the automated testing software category, and with this acquisition, the company says that it has moved closer to its “vision of becoming the testing infrastructure of the internet”.
Freshworks acquires IT orchestration service Flint
Freshworks, a SaaS unicorn from India, has acquired Flint, an IT orchestration and cloud management platform. While the terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, the co-founder would join Freshworks and strengthen its Freshservice IT support.
SaaS companies that got funded in last week
LeanIX Raises $80million Series D Funding Round Led by Goldman Sachs
Enterprise architecture (EA) software company LeanIX has raised $80million Series D funding. The investment was led by Goldman Sachs, and will help the company to continue its international growth and develop more solutions for cloud governance.
OwnBackup lands $50million as backup for Salesforce ecosystem thrives
SaaS backup software OwnBackup has received $50million funding from Insight Partners. The company offers backup and recovery options to Salesforce users, though it’ll be expanding to newer ecosystems in the next 12 months. The company will also be investing in hiring initiatives after assessing the ongoing situation due to the pandemic.
While DocuSign has acquired a company in the notarization space, Notarize, a leading company in this vertical, has announced its Series C funding led by Camber Creek and Polaris Partners. The company has snagged $35million, and has also announced that it has seen unprecedented growth of as much as 400 percent in the past three months.
LogDNA announces $25M Series C investment and new CEO
Log Analysis software LogDNA has received $25million Series C investment. The funding was led by Emergence Capital, and part of the amount will be used for hiring. The company has also announced the new CEO in the form of Tucker Callaway, who had joined the company in January as president and CRO.
MariaDB raises $25M more to expand its SkySQL cloud database platform
The company behind MariaDB and SkySQL, MariaDB Corporation has gotten $25million as part of the extension of its Series C round. The company offers open source database-as-a-service tools and counts 75 percent of the Fortune 500 companies, including the likes of Samsung, Walgreens, and more. The round was led by SmartFin Capital and has doubled MariaDB’s valuation.
Must reads
Marketing in the times of COVID-19: how are SaaS marketers engaging with customers
A Look Back at How COVID-19 Impacted Businesses in Q2
This SaaS startup is making financial management easy for over 45,000 businesses
Listen to
How Drift shapes the future of marketing with cornerstone content and community building
In this episode of SaaS Breakthrough podcast, Demio‘s host chats with Drift’s Mark Kilens, VP, Content and Community. They discuss about the future of marketing and sales, understanding customer persona, how to go about building a community, what is cornerstone content and much more.
DialPad CEO “we’ll break $100m in 2020, comfortable burning $1m/mo, $45m in bank”
Nathan Latka talks with Dialpad‘s CEO, Craig Walker about his journey from being an entrepreneur, VC and then a CEO. Walker talks about what got him to start Dialpad and Uberconference, how they stand out from the competition and their revenue targets this year.
Scaling SaaS to well over $1M ARR with no funding, how being a sommelier helped Neha break the glass ceiling of business & how to successfully scale remote teams efficiently
Contentstack‘s Founder and CEO, Neha Sampat shares her journey from starting a digital transformation consultancy to become a sommelier and now, leading the content management software company. She also discusses how they scaled the company to $1million ARR and then raised $31million Series A round.
Derek O’Carroll of Brightpearl
ERP software Brightpearl which is aimed specifically at retailers was in bad shape a couple of years back. That is until Derek O’Carroll joined the company and completely turned it around to take it to $12million in revenue and more than 1,400 customers worldwide. He shares how he was able to bring this change, right from changing the mindset of employees to charging their customers higher and focusing on the right things.
Watch
The multi-billion dollar SaaS growth story
YourStory’s Shradha Sharma talks to Postman‘s Abhinav Asthana, which is very timely as the API management software raised $150million just last month. The company is now valued at $2billion and its founder shares his journey, learnings and what the future looks like.
