6. Two IT Service Management Superpowers Join Forces

SolarWinds purchased LogicNow in June to combine it with SolarWinds N-Able -- LogicNow's remote monitoring and management competitor -- to boost capabilities and scale.

The infrastructure management vendor said its acquisition of LogicNow creates a complete portfolio of automation, security, network management and service management capabilities for MSPs. The combined company has 20 offices in 11 countries that serve some 20,000 MSPs.

The acquisition was backed by a consortium of investors led by New York-based private equity giant Insight Venture Partners. Silver Lake and Thoma Bravo said they planned to up SolarWinds' investment around cloud, hybrid and MSP environments when they purchased the vendor in October.