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Atlassian Acquires Trello For $425M (techcrunch.com)

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the big-shark,-small-shark dept.

An anonymous reader shares a TechCrunch report: Atlassian today announced that it has acquired project management service Trello for $425 million. The vast majority of the transaction is in cash ($360 million), with the remainder being paid out in restricted shares and options. The acquisition is expected to close before March 31, 2017. This marks Atlassian's 18th acquisition and, as Atlassian president Jay Simons noted, it is also the largest. Just like with many of Atlassian's other acquisitions, the company plans to keep both the Trello service and brand alive and current users shouldn't see any immediate changes.

7 of 90 comments (clear)

  1. Read the article by ArchieBunker · · Score: 3

    And still have no idea what these companies produce or why I should care.

    --
    Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
    1. Re:Read the article by fiannaFailMan · · Score: 5, Informative

      If you plan to work in an Agile environment then you might want to drop that attitude and make it your business to find out what these companies do.

      Atlassian produces online collaboration tools like Jira and Confluence. Jira is a ticket-management system that lets you set up Kanban boards or SCRUM boards on which your team tracks the progress of tickets through the various stages to completion, and supports Agile visualizations such as burn-down charts. Confluence is a wiki-like tool for sharing documentation.

      Plenty of employers are asking for Agile experience, so if you're familiar with these tools then it'll work in your favor.

      --
      Drill baby drill - on Mars
    2. Re:Read the article by Junta · · Score: 4, Insightful

      In my experience if I hear 'the Agile' then almost certainly the process actually in use is not Agile, but the company in question did give some consultant a lot of money to let them tell themselves that. Especially if they go on and on about their Agile process sometimes even more than they want to talk about what they actually *do*.

      Real agile shops tend to not really think much about it. They focus on what they do, and they may use 'Agile' process and such, but it's never something that dominates in their mind. This actually makes sense because Agile came about as a rejection of a process-obsessed software development culture where teams would get so tangled up in formal processes that a lot of work was more process overhead than work, so while a process needs to be in place, it shouldn't loom large in the minds of those following it.

      Now Agile is a buzzword milked for consultancy and certification fees. Atlassian gets some of my disdain for contributing to that (I've heard so many people say you can't possibly be doing Agile if you aren't using JIRA for example), but based on my experience at least their software isn't bad (though perhaps not worth the price compared to free alternatives), so they at least contribute something compared to other businesses invoking 'Agile' for financial gain.

      This is the fate of *anything* that becomes hyped in the world dealing with something like software/project management, it will be diluted and perverted and become indicative of very little.

      --
      XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
    3. Re:Read the article by Junta · · Score: 3, Interesting

      We have used redmine in the same capacity for requirements, project and issue tracking. It's not as shiny and almost no one knows about it, but it's got a surprisingly powerful project management and ticketing system. Unfortunately it's code repository integration is rather weak, but it can be hooked into Gitlab to try to have the best of both (repository management of gitlab with the project tracking of redmine).

      --
      XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
    4. Re:Read the article by 0100010001010011 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      And still have no idea what these companies produce or why I should care.

      And in the same breath Slashdotters will whine that they have relevant skillsets and that it's because of their age they can't get hired.

  2. Makes perfect sense by volodymyrbiryuk · · Score: 4, Funny

    Atlassian guys probably bought it because they were sick and tired using their own crap.

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    sudo rm -r -f --no-preserve-root /
  3. Re:$425 million!!!!???!!!! by sexconker · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Easy, let's say facebook has 1 billion users and each user is worth 5$ of marketing potential, facebook is now worth 5 billion dollars - get it?

    You can't go down to the piggly wiggly and spend marketing potential.

    But you can go to a bank and your investors, wave your "marketing potential" about, and then get some sum of {loan, stock, approval to spend some cash} to BUY the Piggly Wiggly outright for $100 million. You end up increasing your "marketing potential" by $200 million because of "synergy", the news of the buyout boosting the value of Piggly Wiggly, etc.

    When the bank wants their loan money or your investors point to the plateauing stock price, you simply repeat the process with a new target. When you run out of targets you "spin off" prior targets into their own entities and sell their shriveled husks to some chump. If you can't find a chump, you cut the staff, burn it to the ground, and sell the IP and assets for pennies on the dollar.

    If this goes on for a while, you'll end up posting successive quarters of losses and people will be calling for your head. Just jump out the window with your golden parachute and move on to the next company to repeat the process.