Open source website software company Acquia is buying marketing automation startup Mautic, the companies said. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Acquia, based in Boston, develops open source tools to manage websites built using the open source content management system Drupal. Mautic, a few miles away in Medford, is an open source (See a pattern here?) software firm that helps companies launch and manage marketing campaigns across the wide and growing field of platforms, from social media networks to email and websites.
“In today’s world, brands need to engage with their customers in a unified and intelligent way,” said Acquia co-founder and chief technology officer Dries Buytaert, who also created Drupal.
“Just as Drupal disrupted web content management, we believe Mautic disrupts the marketing automation world with open source, providing our customers faster innovation, more agility, more flexibility, and better integrations,” he added.
The open source companies are also linked by venture investor Michael Skok. Acquia’s seed, Series A, and Series B financing rounds were led by Skok’s previous firm North Bridge Venture Partners, and he remains on the company’s board. Skok’s current firm Underscore VC made its first investment as part of Mautic’s $600,000 seed round and followed on with more money for its $5 million Series A round.
Acquia has about 800 employees in offices around the globe. Its CEO Michael Sullivan, former executive at Autonomy and Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: [[ticker:HPE]]), joined in late 2017. Earlier this year, the company boasted that its revenues for 2018 topped $200 million, up from about $170 million in 2017. Acquia has raised approximately $175 million in funding since its founding in 2007.
Acquia sees the string of large open source software exits in 2018—IBM’s (NYSE: [[ticker:IBM]]) deal for Red Hat, Microsoft’s (NASDAQ: [[ticker:MSFT]]) for GitHub, Salesforce’s (NYSE: [[ticker:CRM]]) for Mulesoft, Elastic’s (NYSE: [[ticker:ESTC]]) IPO, and Cloudera’s (NYSE: [[ticker:CLDR]]) merger with Hortonworks—as validation for its vision of open software to manage the myriad digital experiences.
“Open source is poised to transform marketing in the same way it has every other function in the enterprise,” Mautic Founder and CTO DB Hurley said. “As advancements in AI, voice, and connected devices raise the bar for customer experience, there is a growing need to innovate at the edge of customer expectations—one that only open source can satisfy.”
