Technology-focused Acquisitions

Abstract

In 2012 large multinational software company and serial acquirer EMC2 bought two companies for their technology, XtremIO and Syncplicity. At the time of acquisition XtremIO was younger than Syncplicity, did not have any customers and no product on the market. In contrast, Syncplicity did have tens of thousands of customers and a marketable product. Why would EMC make vastly different acquisition timing decisions by buying firms with largely different maturity profiles? EMC’s seemingly curious acquisition behavior motivates this thesis to identify underlying patterns in technology-focused acquisitions. It proposes the framework of performance- and functionality-focused acquisitions. In performance-focused acquisitions, the target’s technology ...