PatchLink to acquire SecureWave

Eleanor Dallaway

Consolidation is continuing to sweep over the IT security industry, as more and more companies strive to broaden their empires with a series of acquisitions and merges.

This week, vulnerability management company PatchLink have jumped on the bandwagon and announced that terms for the acquisition of SecureWave, provider of endpoint security, have been agreed in an all-stock merger.

Although the merger transaction is subject to the approval of SecureWave shareholders, Denis Szerszen, Senior Vice President of SecureWave is confident that the acquisition will go ahead. “I wouldn’t worry about whether it’s going to go ahead or not. It should all go through within three weeks – it just makes perfect sense to the market place”.

So what were PatchLink searching for when looking to acquire? “We needed to find a company who were looking for the same things as us”, says Andrew Clarke, Senior Vice President of PatchLink. “We’ve had a good working relationship with SecureWave for about 18 months now, and many synergies. What is really special is that we share the same fundamental belief in what security should be, versus what it is today”.

“We compliment each other”, agrees Denis Szerszen, “Our approach is entirely compatible. Quite simply, it made a whole load of sense bringing our two companies together”.

“Both PatchLink and SecureWave believe in the positive security model – and this is going to be something we continue to pursue”, continues Clarke.

The acquisition of SecureWave follows hot on the heels of PatchLink’s Harris STAT acquisition in February 2007. “Quite often when a company is acquired by a big vendor, they lose their identity”, says Clarke. “But both Harris STAT and SecureWave will continue to follow their respective product road maps to retain a best of breed. All of these three separate functions are valuable in themselves, and we don’t want to lose sight of that”, Clarke insists.

Although PatchLink promise to integrate and unify the technologies that all three companies offer and sell them as an endpoint UTM solution, they will also continue to offer up the different technologies as individual security products. “In this market, people expect to buy only what they needed. And we will continue to offer that freedom to pick and choose”, confirms Clarke.

“However, we will be addressing the market as a unified company and will be announcing a new, neutral and common company name” he continues.

“This isn’t where PatchLink stops growing”, says Clarke. “We will keep pushing forward, keep building and keep buying or merging. There’s no danger that with all the consolidation going on, that we’re going to end up with only five companies standing – there are too many new companies emerging”.

“I would definitely argue that consolidation is strengthening the market”, says Szerszen. “It’s encouraging more innovation and more creativity, which is definitely benefiting the industry. Consolidation strengthens a company too – with a combined marketing and sales team, we can really get the message out there”.

Watch this space.