Aurea Software Buys Jive In £357 Million Cash Deal

ESW Capital, LLC, through its affiliate Wave Systems, is acquiring enterprise collaboration firm Jive Software for $462 million (£357m) in cash.

The deal to make Jive part of the Aurea family of companies stands at $5.25 per share, representing a premium of 20 percent to its average stock price during the three month period ending 28 April 2017.

The company’s board of directors unanimously approved the merger, which is expected to close in June of this year.

Sold!

Aurea’s technology platform enables companies to build and monitor the end-to-end customer journey across a range of industries and the plan with the deal is to integrate Jive’s software for the creation of internal and external social communities.

“Jive, in combination with Aurea, enables us to bring customer experience and employee and customer engagement together,” said Scott Brighton, CEO of Aurea. “We look forward to helping Jive clients get the maximum value out of their investment with Jive.”

Jive CEO Elisa Steele added that the merger will enable the two companies to “deliver the superior end-to-end employee and customer experience companies require in today’s digital landscape”.

Having spoken to multiple analysts at JiveWorld 2017, the company’s annual customer and partner conference, the jury is out as to whether the deal is a good move. While it makes a lot of sense from a financial point of view, there are some concerns.

For example, one analyst questioned the effect the acquisition would have on Jive’s current customer base, specifically related to the company’s agility and its ability to work closely with customers to create bespoke platforms.

However, where the deal will likely make a lot of sense for Palo Alto-based Jive will be competing in an ever-more competitive enterprise collaboration market.

Workplace app Slack has long been one of its main competitors, with the company securing $200 million (£140.6m) in fresh funding in 2016 to bring its value up to an impressive $3.8 billion (£2.7bn).

Last year also saw Microsoft introduce a chat-based workspace called ‘Teams’ into Office 365 and Facebook has since released Facebook At Work to bring its social network into the business world.

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