Firstly, they seem to be very much aligned on vision: to create a single platform where all IT Asset Management data comes together and to provide actionable data insights across the business. Whether that is called Technology Intelligence or an Enterprise Technology Blueprint™ the outcome for the customer is a single source of trustworthy data from which decisions can be made, whether that is risk mitigation, portfolio rationalisation, cloud migration, cloud cost transparency, unit economics, security, sustainability, operational efficiency, an enhanced user experience and so many more.
Secondly, they complement each other in key areas, for example in coverage, where Flexera are dominant in America, Snow is the dominant tool set across EMEA and APAC.
Where Flexera has focused on making many important acquisitions over the years, bringing additional capability, scope coverage and value to its customers - such as RightScale in 2018, the market leader in multi-cloud management, and RISC Networks in 2019, a cloud migration analytics platform to expedite digital transformation. Whereas Snow, although it too has made several acquisitions over the years, it has a very strong focus on innovation and development, as demonstrated by the launch of its cloud-native platform Snow Atlas, followed by a very compelling SaaS Management product and most recently Snow Copilot. It has the in-house skills and technology to be able to move quickly in response to emerging technologies.
However, what is blatantly clear is the power of two and the positive benefits this will bring to the combined customer base. Topping the list is Flexera’s Technopedia combined with Snow’s Data Intelligence Service (DIS) – already very powerful in their own right, but if they were to be combined, would provide an unrivalled software recognition, normalisation, and enriched dataset delivering tangible benefits to its customers.
Following this acquisition, it will be interesting to see how Flexera’s partnership with IBM develops, as it was a clear better together story with Turbonomics, but IBM has recently acquired Apptio, a competitor of Flexera’s own Cloud Management Platform, and how Snow Software’s partnership develops with Anodot.
Although we don’t know yet how or if the technologies will merge but whatever the decision, the gap has certainly got bigger by the merging of the 2 market leaders with the rest of the pack. It is going to be interesting to see what the next move is by the competition!