Compuware is acquiring Web app experience management solution provider Gomez for $295 million in cash. The deal is expected to close in November of 2009, following government approvals and the satisfaction of other customary conditions.
Gomez employs 272 people around the world, most of which will be staying with Compuware after the transaction’s close, including its executive management team. Gomez was founded in 2001 and is headquartered in Lexington, Massachusetts. The company reported $47 million in revenues in fiscal year 2008.
The company basically provides on-demand web application experience management solutions, helping businesses ensure quality web experiences for their customers. Businesses use Gomez to test their web applications while in development and to monitor their web applications after deployment. More than 2,500 customers around the world are said to use the company’s on-demand services to improve the quality of the web experience in order to increase their revenue from web applications while at the same time reducing their operating costs. Some of the more familiar names on its customer reference list are Adobe, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Yahoo, Expedia and Monster.
You can find more information about the acquisition here, including a non-embeddable video of Compuware President and COO Bob Paul. Most important to know for existing Gomez customers and partners is that there are no changes or interruptions of service planned for now, and Gomez will continue to operate as usual for the foreseeable future.
Another sign that M&A activity in tech is definitely picking up again.
Update: Mass High Tech offers more details about the acquisition. The journal reports that Gomez filed for an IPO last May. Financial reports filed since then indicate the company reached profitability for the first time in the first half of 2009, with earnings of $26.6 million in revenue according to the SEC filing.
Update 2: more info about Gomez’ funding history:
After raising $7 million in early-stage capital from individual investors, Gomez raised its first institutional round of $28.5 million in February 2000 and had two additional rounds of $9.3 million in October 2000 and $5.6 million in February 2001. Dolphin Equity Partners participated with Bank Boston, lead investor, and other institutional investors in the original financings. In November 2001, the existing shareholders decided to not invest any more and Dolphin led a recap of $3.5 million in November 2001 whereby Dolphin became the controlling shareholder. In 2002 and 2003, Gomez purchased for stock Porivo (owned by Aurora Funds) and WebPerform (owned by Doughty Hanson and ABS Ventures). In 2002 Gomez raised $5 million from insiders (led by Dolphin) and in 2003 raised $8.6 million (led by AdAstra).
In total, Gomez raised $66 million since inception.
Awesome !! Best of both worlds combined for true Application performance from an End Users perspective.
I am not sure if that is a good deal, maybe they had to sell???
At my workplace we moved from Gomez to AlertSite years ago. Currently we are considering to move again. This time to AlertFox or Pingdom.
It seems whoever is on the top lacks any true innovation and tries to compensate that with raising the prices (also true for keynote.com).
Francis,
Thanks for switching to AlertSite, and sorry to hear you are considering a move again. Would love to talk with you about why, and see if we can rectify any issues you are having.
Email me at kgodskind at alertsite dot com.
Ken Godskind
CSO at AlertSite
http://blog.alertsite.com
This really is an awesome announcement. I wonder if CA Wily will be able to compete anymore?
CA is already behind even BEFORE this Gomez acquisition.
This is good news for the web monitoring industry….There has been a lot of innovation in this space over the past several years and I believe the demand will continue to grow..
on other note, we were a Gomez customer until few months ago and moved to Webmetrics. Pretty much the same thing but much more affordable.
Something stinks here. This company has been operating since 2001 and only turned a profit 8 years later? And they get bought out at $295 million in CASH?
..hmmm didn’t get your point of smell: maybe they have invested every cent into their network and made it worth the amount of money…..
I’m waiting for Computer Sciences Corporation to acquire Compuware and SunGard.
As I understood it Gomez are really good. For Big Corp. I have used loadimpact.com on several occasions, both to load test and to help in the development process (put some load on the code and you will be amazed at how easy it is to discover the bottlenecks). Costs, well, nothing…
Keynote is awful!