Industry Watch: Money goes to Big Data, social, mobile in 2012
December 20, 2012 —
(Page 1 of 2)
While most of the world’s economy continued to vacillate between slow growth and brink of recession during 2012, the technology sector seemed not to notice, as money flowed like wine for acquisitions and growth.
Unlike past years, though, when infrastructure deals commanded major dollars, 2012 was led by social media. (One area of infrastructure that DID see investment was in the cloud, in building out the clouds themselves, and storage solutions to hold all that cloudy stuff.)
Despite Facebook’s IPO flop (it fell from an opening price of US$43 per share into the teens before rallying back to near $30 by year’s end), the company did manage to find $741 million amid the rubble to buy image service Instagram.
Meanwhile, Microsoft also spent on social computing, shelling out $1.2 billion for social networking software Yammer. It then spent the better part of the second half of 2012 laying out its vision for putting Yammer into all its software and redefining how people will work.
Google, which surpassed Microsoft for second place in market capitalization among technology companies (but remains behind Apple), made $300 million in investments in 2012 through its Google Ventures arm, with 32% of its investments going into mobile, and 31% going into the consumer Internet. And, notably, Google acquired social marketing software provider Wildfire for $350 million.
In the mobile space, API management company Apigee paid an undisclosed sum for mobile app-payment processing technology from the Wholesale Applications Community, a mobile software development organization.
Big spending, though, wasn’t limited to social media and mobile. IBM made a dizzying number of deals in 2012, including the $1.3 billion it spent for talent management software maker Kenexa.
The NoSQL and Big Data markets also saw plenty of action, with IBM again involved. It bought discovery and navigation software provider Vivisimo to meld into its existing Big Data analytics software and to create a solution that helps people gain better insights into their information. Meanwhile, MongoDB developer 10gen received funding from Intel Capital and Red Hat in November, after securing $42 million in a financing round led by New Enterprise Associates in late May. 10gen reported that before the November stake, the company had raised more than $73 million in funding since the company’s inception in 2007.
Related Search Term(s): Big Data, Facebook, mobile
Share this link: http://sdt.bz/37273
Most Read
Latest News
Resources
SAP unveils SAP HANA platform innovations for Big Data and spatial processing
Features include smart data access and expanded cloud deployment options
|
|
|
Alteryx raises $12 million to put Big Data analytics in the hands of all business analysts
Quest founder's firm, Toba Capital, selects Alteryx as its first analytics investment
|
|
|
Google I/O kicks off
Developers get new APIs and tools, and the Go language hits version 1.1
|
|
|
Jelastic launches new version of its Java and PHP hosting platform
Jelastic today announced the launch of a new version of its ultra-scalable cloud hosting platform
|
Telerik adds back-end services to Icenium mobile tool suite
Icenium Everlive makes the suite a complete app development platform, the company says
|
|
|
CollabNet fuses CloudForge, TeamForge
New pricing structure and integration gives developers an enterprise-grade choice for dist...
|
|
|
Eclipse release train for Kepler arrives June 26
New version of Eclipse includes Stardust for business process management, and Orion 3.0 fo...
|
|
|
Google I/O kicks off
Developers get new APIs and tools, and the Go language hits version 1.1
|
IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Cloud Testing and ASQ SaaS
Demand for solutions to test applications on the cloud and for the cloud is rising signifi...
|
|
|
Get to Know the Database Decision Factors
What should you look for when choosing a relational database system? This informative arti...
|
|
|
Exploring the Database Forest
Today’s database technology landscape is more dynamic and varied than ever before. What’s...
|
|
|
Data Management Resource Guide
Today’s data is generated by more than just applications. Data is generated by trillions o...
|