Metalogix Buys MetaVis. And no, this is not April Fools

It’s hard to keep acquisitions of this magnitude under complete wraps these days. The SharePoint community is pretty tight knit, and the lack of conversation in certain circles often points to there being conversations behind closed doors. If you missed the press release this morning, Metalogix has indeed acquired MetaVis. You can find the official announcement on the Metalogix site, and the MetaVis site also points to the announcement.

What does this mean for the industry? Some facts and thoughts:

• Metalogix now has, if I am not mistaken, the largest number of unique licensed SharePoint customers of any ISV (over 20,000), which span every continent (yes, even Antarctica).
• They have the largest product portfolio for security, compliance, governance, and management across Microsoft’s on prem and cloud platforms.
• They have, arguably, the most powerful, feature-rich migration platform for on prem to prem, but have added the strongest on prem to cloud solution for the enterprise.
• Where Metalogix was slow to recognize the movement toward the cloud, MetaVis has been a leader, and will give the combined company a huge leg up on cloud opportunities.
• Where MetaVis was smaller and more word-of-mouth from a sales and marketing perspective, Metalogix brings a much more mature and global sales force that can now confidently sell to customers the world’s best cloud migration and management tools.
• It does reduce some competition in the field. Yes, there are dozens of migration vendors out there, with many vendors who traditionally focused on Exchange migration now looking at how they can also move file shares, SharePoint content, and other cloud platforms (Google Docs, Box, Dropbox, etc) to Office 365. But honestly, for the last couple years there have only been 3 players in migration: Metalogix, MetaVis, and Sharegate. Dell (formerly Quest) resells MetaVis. AvePoint rarely leads with their migration tools, and instead upsells tools as part of their services pitch. Other vendors like Tzunami, Vyapin, Xavor and others rarely to never come up in competitive situations. I’m going to get some hate mail for this bullet, but come on – this is the reality. So yes, combining two of the three leading migration brands does raise questions.
• There will be a partner impact. It’s inevitable. Some partners carved out a competitive niche within tight markets by aligning with Metalogix or MetaVis. My company (GTconsult) happened to partner with both, so in many ways, this simplifies things for us. With any acquisition, there will be some channel conflict. If you are a partner, my approach would be to continue doing what you’re doing, and wait for guidance from Metalogix on long-term product alignment decisions.
• Pricing impacts are probable. I’m sure there will be some near-term adjustments, but if you have a quote on the table, you should be just fine. Metalogix has some work to do in this area that they can keep the momentum going, and not squash the pipeline of partners and existing MetaVis deals. Metalogix have some fantastic sales leadership in place, so I’m frankly not too worried about this one.
• Product overlaps are THE big question, and the hardest part of this acquisition. Both companies have strong solutions, with the strengths of Metalogix being on prem, and the strengths of MetaVis being the cloud. What I sure hope does not happen is the MetaVis platform folds to the larger Content Matrix brand. Integration will take some considerable time, so what I hope to see is an aligned sales strategy with the two products remaining in place, at least for the foreseeable future. At GTconsult, we would like to be able to continue recommending Content Matrix from Metalogix for any on prem migrations, and MetaVis for any cloud migrations. Having a single code base is a great ideal, but as a partner and for our customers, we’d much rather have the best tools for the job than unified branding.

Ok, that’s my opinion on this front. To all of you inside of the combined Metalogix and MetaVis, hope you have a productive week. I know exactly what you’re going through, having been through this twice in the past 5 years, and going back even further, experiencing mergers and acquisitions 5 other times (including the landmark SBC acquisition of Pacific Telesis, as well as a couple of my own startups). That’s what I get for picking IT as a career, I suppose.