Everbridge’s Acquisition Of xMatters Points Towards Growing Consolidation Between Physical & Digital CEM Solutions

Everbridge’s Acquisition Of xMatters Points Towards Growing Consolidation Between Physical & Digital CEM Solutions

Everbridge, a global provider of critical event management (CEM) solutions, announced that on May 7^th, 2021 it had completed the acquisition of xMatters, a solutions provider focusing on IT incident response management. This strategic move bolsters Everbridge’s ‘CEM for Digital’ platform, and points to growing consolidation between solutions focusing on physical and digital incident management.

CEM and IT incident management solutions – aimed at improving IT service operations, cybersecurity, and reducing mean time to restore (MTTR) – have traditionally operated in separate ecosystems. CEM platforms such as Everbridge, OnSolve, and Blackberry AtHoc are designed to enable efficient and speedy response to risk events including extreme weather, terrorism, and recently pandemics. Data is leveraged to inform these actions from a range of sources, including news alerts, organizational information, and site level.

Both solutions ultimately aim to improve the flow of data, boost workflows, and reduce response time to lower the business cost and reputational risk of major incidents. IT downtime incidents, including cyberattacks, are an increasing threat to business continuity and operational resilience. In the first quarter of 2021, firms such as Acer, Microsoft, and CNA Financial have suffered from various malware and cyberattacks. The May 7^th Colonial Pipeline cyberattack, the largest such attack on an oil infrastructure target in the US, demonstrates the severe risk represented by cybercrime both directly and in supply chain operations. Even seemingly mundane IT incidents, including unforeseen server stress and functionality failures, can result in serious damage. A combined solution for physical and digital CEM enables businesses to efficiently respond to critical events across all areas of operation, remove data siloes across systems, and reduce overall exposure.

Firms on both side of the physical and digital incident management gulf have attempted to bridge the gap and offer a unified solution. However the challenges and response requirements of each risk category have resulted in a ‘jack of all trades’ evolution amongst vendors, with functionality focusing on communications, rather than a full suite of tools to comprehensively manage critical events. Everbridge’s acquisition of xMatters represents a major step towards a complete, and unified CEM solution for both physical and digital incident management.