“It was the right moment”

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Stefan Kyora

09.11.2017

Today, it was announced that Qumram had been taken over by Dynatrace. We talked to Qumram CEO Patrick Barnert about the reasons for the sale, the prospects and the sentiment of Qumram investors.

Mr Barnert, what was the attraction of Qumram to Dynatrace?
Patrick Barnert: Clearly the technology. Dynatrace screened the entire market and we had the most attractive technology for recording interactions across all digital channels.

Qumram already had customers in addition to the technology, so it was able to show that the solution works in practice. Did that also play a role in the acquisition?
Absolutely. We were able to demonstrate that it is possible to scale the technology.

From your point of view, what made the sale attractive to the founders and the management?
Of course, you always ask yourself whether you don’t want to grow with the company and if the time is right for a sale. But my plan has always been to make our technology the gold standard. This was exactly the possibility was offered to us by the integration with Dynatrace. We can now evolve the technology much faster and bring our solution to the market globally, not just in one market segment but in many. So it was the right moment for a sale.

Dynatrace is largely unknown in Switzerland. How big is the company?
Dynatrace has about 1,600 employees, of which about 500 are vendors. In total, more than 5,000 customers worldwide use Dynatrace’s solutions for monitoring and optimising critical applications. For us, not only the marketing power was crucial, but also the willingness to invest in the further development of our technology. We will now be able to triple our development team in Barcelona.

Will activities continue in Switzerland?
Yes, at the moment everything goes on as usual. But we have not thought much about the long-term structure. Interestingly, Dynatrace already has an office in Zurich, just a few blocks from Qumram. And a large part of the development takes place in Linz, Austria.

How did the take-over come about? Was Dynatrace specifically looking for candidates for an acquisition?
No. Dynatrace came to us because our technology complements its products. Then it was first about building a partnership. However, both sides came to the realisation that we not only complement each other technologically, but we also work very well together.

Last question, numbers have not been communicated. How happy are Qumram’s investors?
The investors are happy. And as is usually the case with take-overs of start-ups, those investors who came on board early are particularly happy.

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