LANDesk has made its second acquistion since becoming a stand-alone business in September of 2010 (the company acquired analytics specialist Managed Planet in April of 2012) with the acquisition of Wavelink on June 20th. The company has changed hands several times in the last decade — LANDesk had been spun-out of Intel in 2002, was then aquired by Avocent in 2006 — Avocent was then acquired by Emerson Electric in 2009, who sold the firm to Thoma Bravo LLC in 2010. Thoma Bravo LLC is a private equity investment firm that appears to be increasingly focused on mobile-oriented companies to bolster its software and technology portfolio.
LANDesk who is best known for pioneering the management of PCs and servers has long been focused on expanding its systems management product portfolio. Since being spun-out of Intel, the company added a security suite with a best-in-class patch management functionality, as well as application virtualization to streamline application deployments, testing, and rollbacks while minimizing application conflicts.
With Wavelink, the company has added a tenured mobile-oriented ISV to its systems lifecycle management, endpoint security management and IT asset management services. While Wavelink is best known for its strength in device management and terminal emulation software, the company's rugged roots give it strength in managing mission-critical rugged mobile platforms — additionally, Wavelink's Speakeasy solution is a best-in-class solution for voice-driven data collcection.
Thoma Bravo (and LANDesk) reportedly evaluated 17 mobile-oriented ISVs prior to acquiring Wavelink — clearly this was strategic acquisition that will provide momentum as enterprise mobility continues to gain emphasis for LANDesk.