Great management team and plenty of opportunity, but this deal comes with question marks
When former Symantec CEO Mike Brown left the company in April, I wrote a blog post about what I would do if I were recruited as Mike’s replacement. While one of my suggestions was for Symantec to resume M&A activities, I was really thinking about a strategy for filling in product gaps—perhaps Symantec could pick up LogRhythm to add a leading SIEM to its portfolio or grab Carbon Black for endpoint security analytics and forensics.
I never even contemplated a big-time merger, so I was as surprised as anyone when Symantec announced its plan to acquire Blue Coat. I’ve had a few hours to digest this news and will certainly learn more in the days to come. Nevertheless, as an industry analyst, I can’t help but voice my early opinion on this deal.
The good stuff:
1. There isn’t much overlap to this deal, it actually brings together leading products on both sides. Blue Coat comes with its leading network proxy and web security offerings, as well as burgeoning businesses in network security analytics and cloud security. Alternatively, Symantec is big in endpoint security, email security, DLP and managed service. There are real synergies in bringing some of these piece parts together—especially as a bridge between traditional IT and cloud security.
2. The Blue Coat management team has gotten stronger and stronger over the past few years. This group has not only turned the company around, but it’s also transformed it into a focused cybersecurity leader. This team should have the bandwidth to bring its management leadership and discipline to Symantec.
3. Both companies are very strong in threat intelligence and research. As these assets are combined, the new Symantec should be a clear leader in this space.
4. There is clearly an opportunity to build a $5 billion-plus enterprise-class cybersecurity technology and services powerhouse. Cisco, IBM, Palo Alto Networks and Trend Micro are moving steadily in this direction. Why not Blue Coat/Symantec?
Click here to read more.
SOURCE: Network World
Jon Oltsik
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.