 We have yet another player in the GovCon M&A scene in the form of the company whose satellites help governments and businesses around the world map every piece of planet Earth down to the finest details.
DigitalGlobe announced Tuesday it has struck an estimated $140 million deal for The Radiant Group, an information and technology services provider whose core focus areas include cloud computing and big data analytics. This transaction represents DigitalGlobe™s first major acquisition since the company combined with its former satellite imagery competitor GeoEye in 2013. Radiant Group will bring 400 new staffers with 250 of them software engineers to DigitalGlobe in an effort to combine knowledge and talent bases in cloud and analytics. In a subsequent call with investors, DigitalGlobe services business lead Tony Frazier singled out demand for instant availability of data to analysts as an ongoing trend in the intelligence community and one Radiant™s team is actively focusing on. Data and applications based in the cloud can help analysts respond to emerging security threats quicker and even pave the way for new forms of analytics, according to Frazier. œThe U.S. intelligence community is going through a period of transition as it modernizes its technology infrastructure to take advantage of the cloud¦ these trends have led to increased demand for technology solutions that take advantage of open source software, cloud based IT infrastructure, and nontraditional sources of intelligence information, he added. L-3 Communications also finds its way here for a second straight week as the contractor said Monday it will buy the explosive trace detection business of Implant Sciences for $117.5 million. We profiled L-3 last week as a company to watch in GovCon M&A and the New York City-based defense technology maker did not disappoint as it continues a focus on targeted acquisitions that have been a core component of its strategy since the 1997 launch. A still historically-low interest rate situation, high valuations of companies seeking a buyer and general industry consolidation trends all combine to create an environment welcoming of deals. GovCon sector observers and observers surely also welcome these interesting transactions too. THE WEEK’S OTHER TOP 10 GOVCON STORIES | 
