Industries: Enterprise Mobility Management, Technology Expense Management
Key Stakeholders: CIO, CFO, Chief Digital Officer, Chief Technology Officer, Chief Mobility Officer, Mobility Directors and Managers, Procurement Directors and Managers, Accounting Directors and Managers
Why It Matters: Tangoe is the largest technology expense management vendor. By purchasing MOBI, Tangoe gains Managed Mobility expertise, a customer base with high customer satisfaction, and expertise in Robotic Process Automation to support enterprise mobility.
Top Takeaway: Tangoe continues to aggressively acquire market leaders both to increase market share and add Best-in-Breed capabilities, personnel, and technology to its technology management portfolio.
Note: This is part of a four-blog series exploring Tangoe’s acquisition of MOBI.
Part I: Context for the Acquisition
Part II: Why?
Part III: Enterprise Considerations
Part IV: Market Considerations and Conclusion
On December 5th, 2018, Tangoe announced the acquisition of MOBI, a leading managed mobility services organization based in Indianapolis, Indiana in the United States. With this acquisition, Tangoe increases its IT spend under management to over $40 billion, increasing its lead over other spend management vendors with multiple billions of dollars of enterprise technology under management including Flexera, Snow Software, Microsoft Azure Cost Management, CloudHealth by VMware, Calero, MDSL, Cass Information Systems, and Sakon.
Tangoe, currently privately owned by Marlin Equity Partners (an announcement covered by Amalgam Insights), is acquiring MOBI from the co-founders, who owned a majority stake in the company, as well as from Bregal Sagemount, which invested $35 million in MOBI in 2015. This investment was one of the larger investments in an Indianapolis-based technology company for that year and was part of a larger trend establishing Indianapolis as a growing center for emerging technology businesses. MOBI was founded in 2009 as a spinoff from Bluefish Wireless, which was originally founded in 2001. Over the past nine years, MOBI has grown into a global provider of managed mobility services.
With this acquisition, Tangoe plans to keep all operational MOBI employees on board and no changes are expected to be made in MOBI customer support teams or structures. MOBI CEO and co-founder Scott Kraege will join the Tangoe board of directors and MOBI president and co-founder Josh Garrett will join Tangoe as the president of Tangoe’s Managed Mobility Services business reporting directly to Tangoe CEO Bob Irwin.
About Tangoe
Tangoe was founded in 2001 and is the current market leader in telecom expense management and as an overall technology expense management solution. With over $40 billion in spend under management, Amalgam Insights believes that Tangoe’s technology spend is greater than the combined spend under management of cloud and technology cost management vendors CloudHealth by VMware, Calero, MDSL, Cass Information Systems, Sakon, and Cimpl.
Over the past decade, Tangoe has been the dominant force in acquiring and aggregating telecom expense management solutions, with acquisitions including Traq, ISG, Internoded, Telwares, Profitline, HCL (Control Point Solutions), Symphony, Anomalous Networks, ttMobiles, Rivermine, and Vodafone Global. On April 28, 2017, Tangoe itself was acquired by Marlin Equity Partners, which had previously acquired Asentinel.
Since this time, Tangoe has refreshed its executive team by bringing in a set of veterans with deep enterprise software, mergers and acquisitions, and data management experience to shore up gaps that had emerged as Tangoe quickly grew to over $200 million in annual revenue. With the current leadership team in place, Tangoe is now focusing on operational and service aspects necessary to improve customer support and to build a foundation for future growth.
About MOBI
MOBI was founded in 2009 as a spinoff of Bluefish Wireless and quickly established itself as a strong player in Managed Mobility Services. Over the past nine years, MOBI had quickly grown into an organization that claimed $330 million in mobility spend under management while maintaining a 96% customer retention rate and driving the vast majority of its revenue through a recurring subscription model. This growth was supported by a $35 million minority stake investment by Bregal Sagemount in 2015, which was followed by a deep investment in MOBI’s technology capabilities, channel, and overseas investment.
MOBI has made a significant investment into robotic process automation as well as a platform focused on managed mobility. Amalgam Insights believes that investment was vital in helping MOBI to quickly expand the number of devices under management without substantially increasing its staff. In this regard, MOBI was very successful in building both a platform and service infrastructure that was extremely efficient in supporting its clients’ needs.
MOBI has traditionally been known for outstanding customer service, customer satisfaction, and customer retention and was on track to be named in Amalgam Insights’ upcoming SmartList for top Customer Service Solutions.
In Part II of this blog series, we will explore why Tangoe purchased MOBI in context of the trends and decisions stated in this blog. Or, to read the entire report and acquire inquiry time, purchase the report at the following link: https://www.amalgaminsights.com/product/amalgam-insights-market-milestone-tangoe-acquires-mobi-to-enhance-mobility-management-capabilities/