Bellevue venture capital firm Ignition is celebrating today after enterprise cloud management startup ServiceMesh of Santa Monica, Calif. was sold to CSC as part of a strategic acquisition.
Terms were not disclosed in a press release issued today. But in a conference call with analysts CSC said that it is paying $158 million in cash for ServiceMesh, plus as much as $137 million more if certain milestones are met. (Editor’s note: Post and headline updated with financial information).
Ignition’s Frank Artale declined to say how much they made on the deal, but he did note that it was a healthy “venture class return” which is one of the top 10, and possibly top 5, in the history of the firm. It marks the first big exit for Artale at Ignition, who joined the firm in 2011 and has led the charge into a series of enterprise software and cloud deals. Another interesting twist: Ignition was the sole investor in ServiceMesh’s first and only round of capital, leading the $15 million round two years ago.
Falls Chruch, Virginia-based CSC has about 87,000 employees and reported revenue of $13.8 billion for the 12 months ended June 28, 2013. It has a market value of $7.6 billion, and the stock is up 28 percent this year. The company also reported earnings today, showing net income of $209 million on declining revenue of $3.19 billion.
“The future of next-generation IT infrastructure will involve a set of multiple clouds utilized simultaneously by enterprises,” said CSC President and Chief Executive Officer Mike Lawrie in a statement. “ServiceMesh allows us to catalogue enterprise applications and orchestrate those applications dynamically to run in different clouds based on the characteristics of the applications. From our unique position as an independent global technology company, we will integrate those workloads for our clients through our portfolio of services and technologies.”
