Retail therapy?
Hewlett Packard has signed a definite agreement to acquire ArcSight in a move that extends the trend for snapping up security companies and adds to HP's recent spending spree.
The computer giant has recently snapped up Palm and 3PAR and will now add ArcSight, a security and compliance management company to its arsenal for a cool $1.5bn or $43.50 a share.
It looks as if this acquisition may be less trying than the 3PAR deal, where HP slugged it out with Dell for the virtualised storage company which eventually cost it an elevated $2.35bn. The firm has been spending money like the world's about to end since about April in a bid to seemingly capitalise on the recession.
HP believes the acquisition will give it a compelling combination of skills to boost security, reduce risk and cut the cost of compliance for customers, while ArcSight's tech will complement HP's existing security portfolio of hardware, software and services.
HP said together with ArcSight it will be well positioned to secure demanding environments by delivering ‘broader visibility' including a view of all events across IT operations, security and compliance plus ‘deeper context,' or the ability to detect threats by correlating other activity and state changes in real time.
It also said the deal will provide ‘better continuity' for customers and allow HP to provide: "a constant feedback loop between build, manage and monitor to ensure that enterprises remain secure."
Bill Veghte, VP of software and solutions at HP, said: "From a security perspective, the perimeter of today's enterprise is porous, putting enormous pressure on clients' risk and compliance systems. The combination of HP and ArcSight will provide clients with the ability to fortify their applications, proactively monitor events and respond to threats."
Tom Reilly, CEO of ArcSight said: "By combining ArcSight's Enterprise Threat and Risk Management Platform with HP's breadth of application development and operations management solutions, HP will be able to offer an integrated security platform that delivers broader visibility, deeper context and faster remediation of enterprise-wide security and risk-related events. In a world where perimeter security is no longer enough, businesses need this holistic approach to securing their networks, applications and sensitive data."
The close of the deal should be official by the end of 2010, subject to the usual conditions.
HP is not the only company that has paid big bucks for a security firm of late. Intel recently snapped up the world's biggest dedicated security software company McAfee for a whopping $7.68bn in August, in a move that initially had commentators scratching their heads.
It is believed Intel forked out for the firm to diversify in markets and revenue types and become a big player in the embedded space. It remains to be seen whether other companies will now follow security suit in this new trend.
