PTC recently made another step in its reinvention as an Internet of Things (IoT) vendor with the acquisition of Kepware, which develops software that ties together a wide variety of industrial data sources. The deal, which is worth $100 million plus up to another $18 million depending on certain milestones, will close early next year, according to PTC's announcement:
Founded in 1995 and located in Portland, Maine, Kepware serves customers in more than 120 countries in such industries as manufacturing, oil and gas, building automation, and power and utilities.
Kepware's KEPServerEX will become a strategic component of the PTC ThingWorx IoT technology platform. Once the companies' products are integrated, machine data will be able to be aggregated into the PTC ThingWorx platform, integrated with a wide array of internal and external information, and then automatically analyzed using ThingWorx machine learning capabilities. The integration will allow organizations to gain tremendous enterprise-wide insight and to proactively optimize mission-critical processes - enabling them to improve operational performance, quality, and time to market.
The two companies already have many shared customers, although PTC will look to lure existing Kepware customers over to its own IoT environment, which it built through the 2013 acquisition of ThingWorx.
Analysis: Kepware Deal Is Telling, Not Just Another Tuck-In
"Customers want IOT stacks to move beyond the sensors and devices," says Constellation Research founder and CEO R "Ray" Wang. "Eventually we'll see a push towards industry vertical platforms. To this end, PTC's mergers and acquisitions have strategically focused on acquiring key pieces to enable IOT for manufacturers. Over time, the value will not be in the software but in the network intelligence of all the aggregate connected devices."
Moreover, "customers can expect that these insight economies will share information at the basic benchmarking level as well as provide demand signals for more accurate forecasting," he adds. "Kepware brings intelligence to the PTC assets, especially Thingworx which is a solid IOT platform. The battle will be for richer signals and deeper contextual insight."
Reprints
Reprints can be purchased through Constellation Research, Inc. To request official reprints in PDF format, please contact Sales.
