Siemens Acquires ‘Low-Code’ IIoT app Development Platform Mendix for €600m

Siemens is to acquire Boston-based Mendix, a developer of a ‘low-code’ application development platform, for €600 million in cash, subject to regulatory approval. A significant multi-year investment to accelerate R&D innovation and Mendix’s global footprint has also been promised.

Mendix will retain its brand and culture, said Siemens. The German conglomerate has promised Mendix will remain the “most-innovative, open low-code cloud platform” under its stewardship.

Klaus Helmrich, member of the board at Siemens, said: “Mendix is a leader in the rapidly expanding low-code segment and their platform will help our customers to adopt MindSphere even faster by accelerating cloud-based application development for the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT).”

Jan Mrosik, chief executive of Siemens’ digital factory division, said: “As part of our digitalization strategy, Siemens continues to invest in software offerings for the Digital Enterprise. With the acquisition of mendix, Siemens continues to add to its comprehensive Digital Enterprise and MindSphere IoT portfolio, with cloud domain expertise, cloud agnostic platform solutions and highly skilled people.”

Mendix was founded in 2005 in Rotterdam, Netherlands and is headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts. The company has over 400 employees. Mendix will improve Siemens’ current cloud, IoT and digital enterprise software capabilities, Siemens said.

Derek Roos, co-founder and CEO of Mendix, said: “When we pioneered the low-code market over a decade ago, we had a bold vision to help customers change the way they build software, but we never imagined the oceanic opportunity that’s now in front of us. I’m thrilled to accelerate our vision at a much larger scale with the incredible team, assets, industry know-how and footprint of Siemens behind us.

“Being part of Siemens will allow us to serve our customers even better by accelerating our R&D vision, adding a much larger pool of go-to-market resources, and leveraging an enormous global infrastructure. And we’ll do this while maintaining our unique culture, brand and R&D capability that has allowed us to become the leader in our space – I can’t think of a better outcome for our customers, community, partners and team.”

Roos said in a blog post the deal puts the two companies “in a unique position to bridge the physical and digital worlds.”

He said: “With billions of intelligent devices and machines connected to the cloud, organizations will require a new kind of platform to turn these massive amounts of data into real-time business value,” he continues. “Mendix will operate as a segment within Siemens’ Digital Factory Division. Our company name, “Mendix”, will be retained, as will our unique brand and culture.”

Mendix chief technology officer Johan den Haan said: “For the industrial IoT market, the conversation will move to what matters most: business value. In our opinion, the IoT market lacks a vision on application development. Most of the focus is going to the bottom of the stack, the sensors, connectivity, and data, which is understandable and necessary.

“However, it will be impossible to meet the high expectations for value and actual business change. The connectivity, data, and even the analytics aren’t delivering any value to the business. They are necessary, but not sufficient. In the end, it is all about the experiences that can be built on top of this. Experiences that lead to more efficiency. Experiences that lead to new products and services. Experiences that deliver the business model of the future for companies struggling to survive in a software-driven world.”

Roos will report to to Tony Hemmelgarn, chief of Siemens PLM. – enterpriseiotinsights