Software company Axway has announced its acquisition of mobile tech Appcelerator in an all cash-deal. All the employees (around 85) of Appcelerator will now be part of Axway. Axway is registered in France and is headquartered in the US. Appcelerator is based in San Jose, California.

Axway has products and solutions that provide API management and integration capabilities. Appcelerator provides tools for mobile app development and middleware. It’s open source version Titanium is a popular tool among developers for creating cross-platform mobile apps.

What’s in it for the two vendors?

As organizations experiment with IoT and other connected scenarios, there is an increased need to integrate mobile applications with other enterprise applications. By acquiring Appcelerator, Axway obtains additional capabilities to include mobile app development and deployment to its offerings. In future, if and when Axway integrates Appcelerator with their API management, integration, and file transfer capabilities, they could offer a broader range of solutions to customers.

Additionally, Appcelerator will have access to a bigger customer base and presumably more R&D budget to improve its mobile offerings.

What does it mean for Customers?

Deals such as these do bring in some amount of uncertainty. For the time being though, both companies have said there will be no changes to their products as well as pricing in the immediate future.

For common customers, this should simplify their interactions with multiple vendors.

However, if you are evaluating Appcelerator as a stand-alone mobile application development or middleware platform, you will need to carefully assess the vendor’s roadmap. Sometimes when a specialized tool becomes a part of a broader offering, it may no longer remain suitable for those stand-alone scenarios. For example, when Pega acquired Antenna’s mobile offerings, they initially kept it separate as Antenna Mobile Platform (AMP). But those mobile capabilities are now are now part of broader Pega 7 platform.

The Enterprise Mobile Technology Marketplace is evolving rapidly and a number of specialized mobile technology vendors have now been acquired by vendors with a broader set of offerings. Our forthcoming Enterprise Mobile Technology Vendor Marketplace advisory explores some key trends as well as provides an overview of key vendors in this marketplace.