Monday Morning Impact – August 26

Presidio to be Acquired by BC Partners

Presidio, Inc. has announced plans to be acquired by funds advised by BC Partners, an international investment firm, in an all-cash transaction valued at approximately $2.1 billion.

Presidio is a New York-based solutions provider focused on Digital Infrastructure, Cloud and Security solutions for commercial and public sector customers. As of this past June, the company serves approximately 8,000 middle-market, large, and government organizations across a range of industries from more than 60 offices across the U.S.

Under the terms, Presidio stockholders will receive $16.00 in cash for each share of Presidio common stock, representing a premium of 21.3 percent over Presidio’s closing stock price of $13.19 on August 13, 2019, and a premium of 18.3% over the Company’s 60-day volume-weighted average share price leading up to this announcement. Presidio also expects to continue to pay its regular quarterly dividend of $0.04 per share, during the pendency of the transaction.

“We believe this transaction will provide immediate and substantial value to Presidio stockholders, while providing us with a partner that can add strategic and operational expertise to our business, with a focus on executing our long-term strategy,” commented Presidio CEO Bob Cagnazzi.

“Presidio fits squarely with our key investment priorities,” said Raymond Svider, Partner and Chairman of BC Partners. “Its markets benefit from secular growth, as IT systems and networks have become increasingly complex. It is well positioned as a leader in a fragmented industry, offering scope for further expansion.”

The transaction was unanimously approved by the Presidio Board of Directors, which recommends that shareholders vote in favor of the move. The parties expect the transaction to close in the fourth quarter of 2019. Upon completion of the transaction, Presidio will become a privately held company, and its common stock will no longer be listed on the NASDAQ stock market.

Channel Impact^®
Mergers and acquisitions have become an almost daily staple of IT channel news for the past few years.

Global Cyber Alliance Launches Cybersecurity Development Platform for IoT

The Global Cyber Alliance, a London-based cross-sector organization dedicated to cybersecurity, has launched its new Automated IoT Defense Ecosystem (AIDE), its new security development platform to support the Internet of Things and related products. AIDE is intended to help small businesses, manufacturers, service providers and individuals to identify vulnerabilities, mitigate risks and secure IoT devices against the growing volume of threats.

AIDE aggregates attack data into an analysis platform that is available to companies, academia, nonprofits and other entities to study IoT attack signatures and patterns. The analysis platform will be used to generate data feeds available to GCA partners and the security community. These feeds will be made widely available throughout the cybersecurity ecosystem to enable IoT attack mitigation.

The real-time threat feeds generated by the platform can limit and mitigate identified attacks while preventing any further compromise of IoT devices. AIDE allows an edge router/policy enforcement point to use threat feeds to mitigate attacks against the local environment and also relies upon an application of the capabilities of the “Manufacturer Usage Description” standard, through which manufacturers can specify the types of activities and communications that are allowed on their devices.

As part of its first effort to leverage the AIDE and ProxyPot technologies, GCA is also working with Attivo Networks to build a SCADA honeyfarm to collect threat intelligence on attacks targeting industrial control systems. This custom-designed IoT honeypot developed by GCA is capable of replicating one IoT device across multiple IP addresses and physical locations to identify global attack risks quickly, efficiently and accurately. Together, the AIDE and ProxyPot platforms allow for organizations to have greater visibility into the types and scale of threats facing the IoT devices deployed into various environments, including smart cities and other smart ecosystems.

“The number of internet-connected devices has grown exponentially over the last decade and with it the cyber risk to companies, organizations and individuals deploying these devices on their network,” said Philip Reitinger, President and CEO of GCA. “The launch of the AIDE platform furthers GCA’s mission of providing scalable, implementable solutions to organizations of all sizes and budgets to secure their devices and reduce risk.”

 “IoT devices are notoriously difficult to secure and apply typical prevention measures,” said Marc Feghali, Co-founder and Vice President of Product Management at Attivo Networks. “By creating customized decoys that blend in with production connected devices, organizations can quickly detect attackers, engage them, capture their attack methods, derive their attack signature and divert them away from real IoT infrastructure, mitigating the risk of attacks on Operational Technology infrastructure.”

Channel Impact^®
With an estimated 14.2 billion internet-connected devices currently in use and a projected increase to 25 billion by 2021, the challenge to identify, analyze and mitigate IoT threats has dramatically increased. This new platform offers necessary capabilities for data collection, analysis and automated defense that can provide small businesses and home users with added protection.

Axcient Rolls out New Offerings for MSPs

Axcient, a Denver-based company providing business availability and cloud migration solutions for MSPs, has announced technology enhancements to help lower its total cost of ownership, including unlimited storage for its BDR solutions and new appliances featuring hot-swap drives and IPMI.

“We are serious about providing a frictionless experience for MSPs, and this announcement validates our commitment to helping MSPs protect everything for their customers in a cost effective, yet verified way,” said Kevin Hoffman, chief technology officer and co-founder at Axcient. “By offering a disruptive pricing model for BDR, faster RTO, and new hardware, we are boosting our partners’ business performance while adding more margin to their bottom line.”

The company has also rolled out a new marketing enablement platform for MSPs. The platform, which takes the form of a dashboard within the Axcient Marketing Portal, was designed to enable MSPs to build comprehensive marketing programs simply and scale their company’s marketing efforts.

“MSPs are masters at managing their clients’ IT environments, and they often don’t have the time or resources to market their business,” said Angus Robertson, chief revenue officer at Axcient. “By helping MSPs market new solutions to their customers, it will enable them to better optimize their clients’ businesses and build more robust technology stacks.”

Channel Impact^®
Marketing, while important to effective sales strategies, is often an area where even the most competent channel partners sometimes falter – either due to time or resource restrictions. Vendor marketing tools that provide comprehensive resources and marketing assets tend to be highly popular with channel partners, including MSPs.