It’s been a busy summer for acquisitions. We saw Sonance and Blaze together at InfoComm and heard more about NETGEAR’s acquisition of cybersecurity company Exium. Shortly after InfoComm, Audinate acquired the AI camera control company Iris. The NETGEAR and Audinate moves are in keeping with trends towards security and AI, and Audinate is moving ahead to further expand Dante into the whole of AV. So, logical moves for both.
Bigger news was to follow when Hall Technologies acquired the Atlona product portfolio. As a refresher, Panduit acquired Atlona in January of 2019, about a year before pandemic, so whatever the strategy for that acquisition, it no doubt went through some changes.
We’ve seen how big companies like Panduit don’t have long-lasting AV marriages; this one had a 5.5-year run, during which time Atlona continued to develop a relevant ecosystem of products for our expanding AVoIP landscape. Atlona co-founder Ilya Khayn left the company in September of 2021 nearly three years after the acquisition. (Ilya’s brother Michael, who was co-founder and VP of engineering, had left in 2020.) At the time, Atlona sales and biz dev exec Jamey Swigert moved into the Executive Director role and remains at Panduit now.
As always, I can count on my colleague Cindy Davis at AV Technology to get on the phone. Her conversation with Hall CEO Ken Eagle is worth a listen (search avnetwork.com or if you’re reading on the digital edition go here). There’s a transcript for those who prefer to read. This conversation was right after the announcement.
Ken formerly worked at Atlona for seven years, leaving in 2021, shortly before Khayn did. So Eagle comes from a broad perspective on Atlona, having worked with the co-founders and having overlapped into the Panduit acquisition. At Hall, he initially served as VP of Technology, so his experience with the technology and business history of both companies is extensive.
As the blended roadmap unfolds, the initial position is that both brands will continue. Hall-branded products will continue to develop in the medical channel, while the AV-related Hall products will gradually merge into the Atlona brand starting in 2026. In the meantime, the Hall AV products will continue as usual, and Eagle is promising a logical transition for Hall users as the brand products merge–existing sales channels, reps, and distributors will reportedly remain in place.
The other big news of summer was AVI-SPL’s acquisition by private equity company 26North from Marlin Equity (Marlin retains a minority stake). If you recall, Marlin held a majority stake during the Whitlock merger, which brought the two Marlin-owned companies together. So it goes with the AVI-SPL juggernaut.
Again, count on Cindy to immediately get on the phone with the perennial John Zettel. If you’re reading digitally, that interview is here. The gist is all about more growth for AVI-SPL, internationally in terms of more reach, and technologically in terms of platform development, assuming for managing services. John makes clear that, unlike the more complex Marlin acquisition/ Whitlock merger, this is a more straightforward growth/resources play, as AVI-SPL makes its way towards $2b in revenue (last reported revenue for SCN 2024 Top 50 was $1600m from 12,800 installations).
