Motorola Solutions buys Rave Mobile Safety

Motorola Solutions continued its multi-year buying spree of companies with the acquisition of Rave Mobile Safety, a Massachusetts-based company known for its cloud-based mass-notification and incident-management solutions, according to an announcement released this week.

John Zidar, senior vice president of Motorola Solutions’ global enterprise business, said that Rave Mobile Safety is an appealing acquisition, because it is a successful company that has a complementary product portfolio that serves many of same vertical sectors that Motorola Solutions prioritizes.

“If there’s an alert or streaming video that needs to happen on some sort of device, then [customers need to] document that, alert everybody and direct the right resources to prevent or reduce [the problem], that’s where Rave fits in,” Zidar said yesterday during an interview with IWCE’s Urgent Communications. “It’s a lot like the glue in the middle—that’s how we view it.

“We [Motorola Solutions] do some of that. Will we do it better now with them [Rave Mobile Safety]? For sure.”

Rave Mobile Safety CEO Todd Piett echoed this sentiment and said that he has long believed that Motorola Solutions “would be the perfect home for the company.” And this level of optimism has been reinforced by his company’s customers since new of the acquisition was made public on Wednesday, he said.

“There were a whole bunch of [examples] where we were going to the same people with different pieces of the puzzle,” Piett said during an interview with IWCE’s Urgent Communications. “When you tie all of that together into holistic solutions—and this has been repeated by our customers, even in the past 24 hours—now I [the customer] can go and have everything interoperating in the way I need to handle every type of incident, from the worst mass casualties to a natural disaster to more effectively responding to someone with a heart attack.

“I can see video on the scene of what’s going on. I’ve got the dispatch system and all of the resources available. I can see where the officers are on their radios. I can communicate with people on site instantly—all from one interface. It’s really exciting to pull all of these disparate components together into one holistic solution.”

Piett said that Motorola Solutions had indicated interest in Rave Mobile Safety as the startup went through venture-funding stages and private-equity ownership in previous years. Early this year, Motorola Solutions was “quite aggressive” in its pursuit of Rave Mobile Safety, which led to the acquisition, he said.

Motorola Solutions confirmed that the purchase of Rave Mobile Safety has closed. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

With the purchase of Rave Mobile Safety, Motorola Solutions has spent more than $5 billion to acquire more than 30 companies during the past seven years, according to a Motorola Solutions spokesperson.

Zidar said that Rave Mobile Safety customers and partners should not see any near-term changes in their business relationships with the company, citing Motorola Solutions’ 2019 acquisition of Avtec as a blueprint for the potential evolution of the relationship between Rave Mobile Safety and Avtec. For instance, Rave Mobile Safety will maintain its branding and existing commercial relationships, he said.

“Much like Avtec years ago, Rave should continue to do what they do best,” Zidar said. “Are we going to make unilateral decisions overnight that we’re not working [another company]? No, definitely not. Todd [Piett] is going to make those calls—as he does today—and decide what makes the most sense.

“What we will do is figure out how we could maybe bundle, package or go into any existing customer of ours or theirs and expand the respective funnels and pipelines.”

While some acquisitions or mergers can result in significant layoffs, Zidar said he does not anticipate that being the case for Rave Mobile Safety.

“They have a very talented team, and they have people in different places than we do,” Zidar said. “We have people in different places than they do.”

Piett said he was encouraged by a call this week from Motorola Solutions Chairman and CEO Greg Brown regarding the acquisition and the future of the 200 employees of Rave Mobile Safety.

“Greg Brown called and said something I thought was really powerful: ‘We’re not buying real estate. We’re buying the intellectual property of a company, and the people are that asset,’” Piett said.

“I’m excited to stay on. The people I’ve met at Motorola have been fantastic; we share the same cultures and the passion for improving public safety. I feel the same for our entire team.”

Brown also commented on Motorola Solutions’ reasoning behind making the Rave Mobile Safety in a press release announcing the transaction.

“Motorola Solutions’ technologies strengthen the critical intersection of public safety and personal security,” Brown said. “Our acquisition of Rave complements our portfolio with a platform specifically designed to help individuals, businesses and public safety agencies work together in more powerful ways.”