SAP to acquire Gigya; First Round an investor
Tom Paine
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SAP, in one of its 'Sunday morning surprises' that enterprise software reporters are accustomed to (due I think to Euro reporting requirements) announced an acquisition yesterday morning. Not a huge one by its standards, but interesting none the less.
It agreed to buy Gigya , a leading SaaS identity and access management vendor. Originally an Israeli firm, Gigya in recent years moved headquarters to Silicon Valley, though R&D continues in Israel. The Israeli paper Globes, which broke the story, reported the price at $350 million, which has been largely verified by other sources. Gigya had raised $105.8 million.
First Round Capital had invested in Gigya's Series A, B, and C rounds of financing, according to CrunchBase data. I don't know what its stake was, but as an early investor I imagine its return was rather good.
Gigya had attracted some IPO talk in the past, but judging from the acquisition price its doubtful it had reached a scale where it would have been a strong IPO candidate, which is likely why it sold. Gigya has around 300 employees.
Gigya will be folded into SAP's ecommere solution, Hybris. SAP said it announcing the deal:
"Gigya’s consent-based identity data platform and SAP® Hybris® Profile data matching and enrichment capabilities to be integrated
Identify and opt-in consumers for personalization across all customer touchpoints — customers maintain control of their data."
As R "Ray" Wang, CEO of Constellation Research, commented in responding to me by email, "Identity is key to commerce and marketing. no other way around it."
One question I have is how applicable this will be on the business-to business side, or is it simply a consumer marketing tool.
