This week, TeamViewer made another significant 2024 gain by acquiring 1E, a Digital Employee Experience (DEX) management toolset provider.
TeamViewer is acquiring 1E by signing an agreement with Carlyle Europe Technology Partners, which is also part of the global investment firm Carlyle. 1E has an enterprise value of $720 million.
TeamViewer aims to close the deal in early 2025, allowing the firm to continue its goal of becoming a leading figure in the digital workplace market leading i to the new year.
The move will combine TeamViewer’s immersive workplace tools with the 1E autonomous IT platform. TeamViewer and the integrated 1E services will provide clients with a system that proactively prevents and solves IT issues and provides efficient remote expert support to resolve them.
Oliver Steil, CEO of TeamViewer, explained:
With the acquisition of 1E, TeamViewer will enter a new era of intelligent endpoint management by providing customers with a smart solution for preventing and tackling technology issues with minimal friction.
Steil remarked that TeamViewer is “ideally positioned to meet growing customer demands for more real-time, automated, and proactive approaches in the IT and the OT space ” by working with 1E.
Steil called TeamVeiwers’ 1E acquisition ” the largest acquisition to date,” marking “an important step forward to accelerate enterprise growth, drive innovation, and deliver greater value to our customers.”
A New Direction
Integrated 1E features will also give TeamVeiwer customers the ability to minimize downtime, disruptions, and costs while also boosting IT performance, employee experience, and satisfaction.
Ralf W. Dieter, Chairman of TeamViewer’s Supervisory Board, also added:
This transformational combination of TeamViewer and 1E will enable further significant expansion into the digital workplace market and set up TeamViewer for continued success. With the extension of Mei’s term and the addition of Mark to the Management Board, we can ensure clarity and stability from our strong leadership team to deliver growth and increase stakeholder value for the future.
The move also sees various 1E transfers to the TeamViewer structure, seemingly to help transition features and boost the delivery of 1E to TeamViewer customers.
Those moving to TeamViewer from 1E include Mark Banfield, CEO of 1E, who will become TeamViewer’s Management Board and Chief Commercial Officer. Stephen Tarleton, 1E’s Chief Marketing Officer, will also become Chief Marketing Officer and a member of TeamViewer’s Senior Leadership Team. The new staff will help drive 1E’s future commercial/product strategy and growth.
Speaking on the restructuring, Mark Banfield, CEO of 1E, noted how working with TeamViewer supports 1E’s mission of driving “innovative IT solutions that shape the future of work.”
Banfield explained:
Together with TeamViewer, we can accelerate that mission by integrating our DEX platform with world-class connectivity solutions. As two companies with truly complementary products and technologies, TeamViewer is the ideal partner to help us scale our offerings and create an intelligent endpoint management leader. I’m excited to join TeamViewer’s management board as we enter this next chapter of our joint growth story, and I would like to thank the team at Carlyle who have supported us on our journey so far.
TeamViewer in 2024
At Ignite 2024, TeamViewer, a provider of XR remote guidance services, launched new AI features integrated with Microsoft’s technology portfolio, including Teams, Copilot, and Azure OpenAI infrastructure. The Microsoft-enabled, ‘AI Session feature allows TeamViewer users to generate comprehensive summaries of remote guidance and support sessions. This capability leads to valuable insights related to standard frontline procedures, such as maintenance, repairs, and training, ultimately optimizing operational efficiency.
Mei Dent, Chief Product & Technology Officer at TeamViewer, added:
Microsoft Azure OpenAI is at the core of our AI-driven insights, ensuring data security and efficiency as we deliver high-performance solutions at scale. This integration with Azure marks the beginning of a broader strategy to embed AI deeply into IT support operations. By connecting TeamViewer insights with Microsoft Copilot, we’re enabling teams to tackle issues proactively, optimize operations, and make data-driven decisions with ease. Our vision is to empower support teams to collaborate seamlessly and drive smarter, more agile support within a unified platform.
Microsoft’s commitment to TeamViewer and, by extension, XR-powered remote guidance tools is clear; notably, Microsoft named TeamViewer its 2024 Teams Partner of the Year. The award relates to TeamViewer’s recent integration with Microsoft Teams and Copilot AI service.
With the ‘AI Session’ integration, users can access TeamViewer enhanced in-chat and in-call support sessions within the Teams suite. Remote support agents leveraging the TeamViewer service can provide session data, analyze insights, and gain Copilot AI-driven recommendations. This allows IT teams and instructors to collaborate with frontline workers using crucial TeamViewer and Teams data in one unified application.
Edith Wittmann, General Manager of Global Partner Solutions Germany at Microsoft, also added:
TeamViewer and Microsoft are joining forces to enhance the value and experience for our customers. By combining TeamViewer’s advanced remote support and workflow solutions with Microsoft’s powerful AI and cloud infrastructure, we are not only improving agent productivity today, but moving towards an agent-less support in the future, which will be a gamechanger for our customers.
Additionally, Alfredo Patron, Executive Vice President of Business Development at TeamViewer, emphasized that the company’s partnership with Microsoft demonstrates its dedication to “leading industry standards and empowering IT teams to achieve new levels of service excellence.”
Patron also added:
In a future where AI-driven support is the norm, TeamViewer aims to stay at the forefront, integrating deep AI insights with Azure’s capabilities to deliver support that is faster, smarter, and more secure.
Moreover, in January, TeamViewer announced a partnership with Almer to develop an AR headset for enterprise end users. This move highlights TeamViewer’s dedicated move towards supporting workplace AR solutions, following a history of working with enterprise customers to leverage AR for various use cases.
The partnership sees the creation of Arc 2, a product the firms are designing to enable remote collaboration. The Almer Arc headset includes a 25MP camera, beamforming microphones, built-in speakers, a holographic display, 8 hours of battery life, and a 138-gram weight.
Sebastian Beetschen, CEO and co-founder of Almer, said:
Our headset is much like a jet fighter visor, mounted directly in front of your eyes, featuring a transparent, see-through screen. The Almer Arc is a lightweight, compact, and easy-to-use AR headset. When a problem arises, the frontline worker takes the Almer Arc and contacts a remote expert, who can see and hear what the worker experiences. The expert identifies the issue, highlights objects, and displays documentation in the worker’s view, simulating a collaborative, in-person experience.
Almer’s history begins with its founders, Beetschen and Timon Binder, who combined their experience working with Microsoft Hololens and Jet Fighter AR headsets to create lightweight, affordable, and scalable headsets for businesses.
The firm emphasizes that its headset allows users to leverage extended reality for mission-critical tasks and in dynamic environments, enabling them to connect with distributed team members. This technology allows users to display information and relevant assets in augmented reality.
Sebastian Beetschen has also remarked that, over the years of working in the industry, Almer has “learned a lot” about designing XR devices that are “super adaptable” and flexible enough to meet workers’ varying preferences.
