This week, Techcrunch announced that ServiceNow will be acquiring the Belgium configuration management startup Sweagle, terms of the acquisition were undisclosed. Just about every company has had to make the adjustment to working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic. Public companies like Zoom, Slack and Fastly have seen significant increases in their share prices due to the fact that their services make the adjustment easier for customers. ServiceNow which includes a product that serves as an “IT help desk component” recognized that help desk’s are most likely swamped during the pandemic. To try to mitigate configuration problems before they happen in the first place they acquired the configuration management start up Sweagle.
Why this transaction?
The York IE Team decided to make this our transaction of the week because we love to see ways tech companies are providing solutions and answers for the future of work. ServiceNow’s vice president and general manager of DevOps has shared his thoughts on how Sweagle will help them grow; “With capabilities for configuration data management from Sweagle, we will empower DevOps teams to deliver application and infrastructure changes more rapidly while reducing risk”. According to ServiceNow, there can be as many as 50,000 different configuration elements in a single enterprise application. This is why acquiring Sweagle was a strategic acquisition, as they have designed a configuration management platform that uses machine learning to help customers automate that process and make it transparent.
ServiceNow heatin’ up
This transaction highlights one of the three acquisitions ServiceNow has made already this year. In January, they bought Loom Systems and Passage AI, all three companies leverage AI in their products. This most recent acquisition is a recurring trend in the tech scene during the pandemic, smaller, early stage start-ups being bought by larger corporations. Could this be a sense of urgency by larger companies trying to stay ahead of the game? Who knows how long some cities and states will be working remotely, this pandemic could end up changing the working scene forever. Perfect timing for early startups that offer a unique service to control their own destiny and prove their worth.
