Ivanti acquires Cherwell. All available details here.
Ivanti, Inc., a company created from the merger and acquisition of multiple IT management solution providers, has announced plans to acquire another: Cherwell Software. The terms of the deal were not released, but Ivanti’s goals were clearly stated. The company plans “to expand the reach of its Neurons platform, providing end-to-end service and asset management from IT to lines of business and from every endpoint to the IoT [Internet of Things] edge.”
Ivanti’s Neurons platform integrates its Enterprise Service Management, Security, and Unified Endpoint Management solutions. Neurons enables enterprises to deliver self-healing and self-securing features to devices and self-service to end-users, from a single management console, according to Ivanti. The addition of Cherwell technologies will extend and broaden the reach of Neurons and its automated, secure workflows to more users, devices, and business processes, the companies said.
If the companies can integrate their technologies successfully, the Ivanti-Cherwell combination should deliver greater management abilities across enterprise networks, and especially to the edges of those networks. The growth of work-from-home and work-from-anywhere demands, the explosion of IoT devices, and the rise of more computing power at the network edge make more effective, secure management more essential than ever. So Ivanti should find many enterprises receptive to its newly expanded story.
And Ivanti has rich experience taking new stories to market. When it was known as LANDESK, the company had acquired AppSense, Shavlik, and Wavelink. Separately, HEAT Software was forged from the joining of FrontRange and Lumension. Then, in 2017, the investment companies that owned LANDESK and HEAT joined those companies together to form Ivanti.
To craft and credibly deliver a new go-to-market story and strategy across multiple previously separate entities, their respective partners, and their customers was a major challenge. To its credit, Ivanti leadership largely succeeded, retaining incumbent customers and partners while adding new ones. While Ivanti leadership has changed since 2017, that experience should serve current management well.
In a larger context, the Ivanti-Cherwell deal could also intensify competition at the upper end of the market for business technology management solutions. ServiceNow dominates that segment, while Freshworks is steadily moving upwards within it. The addition of Cherwell people, technologies, customers, and partners should make Ivanti a more formidable competitor.
Of course, everything depends on the ability of Ivanti to integrate those people, technologies, and partners well and quickly, while losing as few key people and partners as possible. If it can do those things, and tell its story well, it should be able to retain most current customers and gain new ones. The next 12 to 18 months will be a critical period well worth watching by business technology decision-makers at any enterprise pursuing digital transformation, work-from-home/anywhere support, or other initiatives dependent upon powerful, flexible management alternatives.
