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Mimecast

Mimecast, the cloud-based email management to protect our sensitive information.

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Mimecast is a publicly-traded company in the IT sector specializing in cybersecurity, information security, and email and file archiving. Peter Bauer and Neil Murray founded the company in 2003 and currently, Peteris is serving as the CEO of the company while Neil is in the position of CTO. The headquarters of the company is based in London, England. Though Mimecast offers a wide range of products to its customers, it mainly specializes in cloud-based email management for Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft Email 365. Mimecast became a public company in November 2015.

About Mimecast

The main goal of Mimecast is to eradicate the risks that we face daily on your email system. It also helps in reducing the cost that is required to protect our sensitive information by moving the workload to the cloud. In a single subscription-based model, Mimecast provides comprehensive email security along with archiving and service continuity.

Currently, Mimecast has 12 offices in several continents. It has more than 40,600 customers on a worldwide basis and approximately 1,700 employees to make better products and offer consistent service. The major investors of the company are Index Ventures, Dawn Capital, and Insight Venture Partners. Recently, the company has hired a new Public Sector and Channel Director to strengthen its operation in South Africa.

Mimecast
Image source: businesstech.co.za

History of the Company

Both Peter Bauer and Neil Murray came from an experienced and entrepreneurial background. They previously founded FAB Technology and Pro-Solutions respectively. Before founding Mimecast, Peter was trained as a Microsoft systems engineer and gained experience working with corporate messaging systems. The company designed the MIME protocol for formatting multimedia e-mail. Nathaniel Borenstein was the chief scientist behind the design of this protocol. After the company was founded in 2003, it expanded overseas establishing offices in London, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, Dallas, Munich, Israel, and many more.

The idea behind founding Mimecast was quite simple as the product was developed to make it easy for users to embrace email. In October 2015, the company filed for its IPO and the next month it started trading on the Nasdaq Global Select Market. In the past few years, Mimecast has acquired several companies starting with Ataata, a startup specializing in cybersecurity. In 2018, the company acquired another cybersecurity firm called Solebit. It acquired a company called DMARC Analyzer in 2019 and last year it acquired Segasec.

Business Strategies

In an interview, Peter Bauer said that the M&A strategies of the company are mainly focused on advanced technologies and new talents. They mainly target buying start-ups that can provide the company with new opportunities and capabilities. It is more like harnessing the power of any new technology and giving it a proper shape using the funds of Mimecast. The company didn’t acquire any businesses for the first fourteen years, instead, they chose to build an organic platform with strong architecture. Mimecast plans for months before acquiring so that they understand the workflow of the organization well and if their technology can bring new capabilities for its customers.

Peter Bauer – Co-Founder and CEO

The CEO and co-founder of Mimecast, Peter Bauer is also a Board Member of the company. He has significant contributions to Mimecast’s SaaS strategy. He along with Neil Murray has developed the pure cloud delivery mechanism for an easy and secured user experience. Peter originally belongs from South Africa and during the 1990s he was trained as a Microsoft system engineer. He moved to the UK from South Africa where he founded Mimecast.

In 2011, he moved to Boston to help in expanding the operations of Mimecast to South Africa. In an interview, he mentioned that though their potential plans got delayed due to the crisis of COVID-19, the employees improved their communications significantly during work from home. And, it helped in uplifting the working environment of the company.

Kronos

Kronos – Transformation from rising as foremost publicly held software firm to the private firm as Ultimate Kronos Group

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Every industry whether it is manufacturing, healthcare, banking, entertainment, or any other demands skilled personnel. Why not so? To grow the business, it is necessary to have a capable workforce. Else, hiring unqualified people can cause a huge loss in terms of business and ultimately to the economy of the country. The solution to this problem is a better workforce and human capital management. Workforce Management helps to get the right workers in the right workplace at a right time. Thus, improvising the efficiency of the workforce as well, lower the cost of the unnecessary workforce. While in this modern world, the modern solution is needed to deal with this as Kronos does.

Kronos Incorporated headquartered in Lowell was known for providing cloud-based workforce management services. It has done excellent work in this field as well; it has developed several other innovative products. However, it has merged with Ultimate software in April 2020. Since then, it is known as Ultimate Kronos Group. At the time when it was an individual firm, Kronos employed 6000+ job seekers all across the world.

Backstory of Kronos

Best known as an American multinational company, it primarily offers cloud-based workforce management and human capital management. Kronos Incorporated was established in 1977. It was founded by Mark S. Ain, who was MIT and Simon Business School’s student. He served as a CEO for a long time, thereafter, his brother Aron Ain stepped up a CEO in 2005.

Just after two years of establishment, the firm has designed the world’s first-ever time clock using a microprocessor. Apart from that, it has created a Pc-based attendance product in 1985. As a matter of fact, Kronos set the record to earn profit and sustainable growth for long period, in spite of being publicly held firm in the history of the software industry. In 1992, it has offered a public listing on NASDAQ. 

Kronos Journey from being Public to Private firm

Started as a private firm, Kronos started public offering in 1992. Since then, it has operated as a public listed firm. However, in the middle of 2007, Kronos got investment from Hellman & Friedman, and JMI Equity. Thus, helped it to become a private firm. Again in 2014, GIC and Blackstone, well-known private equities also offered investment in the firm. From that time, it has started to generate over 1-billion-dollar annual revenue.

Apart from the public to private changes, Kronos also prefer to shift the headquarters to Cross Point Town in Massachusetts. The purpose behind the location change was to combine multiple offices under a single roof. Recently, the firm has merged with Ultimate Software causing the name change to Ultimate Kronos Group. Though the whole company will be directed by Aron Ain.

Product and services

The firm entered the market by manufacturing Time Clocks using a microprocessor. But presently, it is mostly focused on software development and offers related services. This software is design for the human workforce and capital management. Apart from that, it offers cloud applications in a similar field.  As well, Kronos offers other support services, consulting, and training to its clients.

Aron Ain- CEO

Kronos CEO
Image Source: thriveglobal.com

He is presently leading the Ultimate Kronos Group, born out of the merger of Ultimate software and Kronos. Apart from being a well-known software technology executive, Aron is a well-known American Author. In 2005, he became CEO at Kronos after his brother’s retirement. Since then, he guided the policies of the firm and explored the business all across continents. Throughout his career, he has been awarded many times. Aron was honored with the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the year award. Moreover, he was included in the list of Top 100 CEO in the U.S. in 2019 (Glassdoor).

Bottom Line

Under both Ain brothers’ policies, Kronos has used an acquisition strategy to explore the business. Acquisition of Principal Decision system international, Stromberg, SaaShr.com is some of the major acquisitions in the company’s history. As well, The Workforce Solution Software division of SimplexGrinnell, Optilink, empower software solution are few noticeable acquisitions made by Kronos.

Recently, the firm was the topic of discussion for its automated report-generating tool. It turned out useful to analyze attendance and work record of Covid-19 positive workers. Thus, it gets easy to detect potentially affected co-workers amid the pandemic.