Siemens has announced the acquisition of low-code app platform provider Mendix for €0.6 billion ($730m) alongside putting across a ‘significant multi-year investment to accelerate R&D innovation’ and the global footprint of its platform.
The move will see Mendix move into Siemens’ ‘digital factory’ division, which aims to focus on hardware and software products integrating with the manufacturing supply chain. As M2M and IoT technologies enable much greater numbers of devices, they need their own applications –
“As part of our digitalisation strategy, Siemens continues to invest in software offerings for the digital enterprise,” said Jan Mrosik, CEO of Siemens’ digital factory division. “With the acquisition of Mendix, Siemens continues to add to its comprehensive Digital Enterprise and MindSphere IoT portfolio, with cloud domain expertise, cloud agnostic platform solutions and highly skilled people.”
From Mendix’s perspective, the move comes at an inflection point in the industry, according to CEO Derek Roos. “As the world around us gets increasingly connected, organisations are facing increasing challenges to cope with vast amounts of data and customers are increasingly expecting entirely new experiences and interactions,” Roos wrote in a blog post. “New technologies like VR, IoT and AI will drive an incredible convergence between the digital and physical worlds, creating entirely new industries and business moments in which people, data, businesses and things work together, dynamically.”
The two companies started talking more than a year ago around a strategic partnership but – as can happen – discussions soon moved on and turned to the question of acquisition.
“With millions of connected devices and systems, operations in more than 200 countries, and more than 15,000 software engineers, Siemens has access to know-how, expertise and reach few others can match,” added Roos. “Even fewer software companies can attempt to compete with such scale in ‘things’.
“Siemens has been on a mission to leverage its foothold and data-rich infrastructure in the physical world, to become a leader in the digital world, investing over $10bn in the last decade to acquire and built out software businesses.”
You can find out more about the acquisition here.
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