The much-hyped Microsoft-LinkedIn acquisition on Monday evening overshadowed another very important acquisition in tech history which also took place around the same time. Symantec and Blue Coat, announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Symantec will acquire Blue Coat for approximately $4.651 billion in cash from Bain Capital, in the struggling antivirus company’s largest deal for more than a decade.
The transaction has been approved by the Boards of Directors of both companies and is expected to close in the third calendar quarter of 2016.
“This transaction will combine Symantec’s leading threat telemetry with Blue Coat’s networks and cloud security offerings to provide differentiated security solutions across hundreds of millions of endpoints and servers, and billions of email and web transactions,” Symantec said in a statement.
The Indian channel has reacted positively to this acquisition. According to V Anand, CEO, Raksha Technologies: It is really going to strengthen Symantec position . Symantec was lacking in this space for a while where their customers are forced to buy non Symantec solution to provide gateway level web security .
Read more: Symantec Acquires Blue Coat To Redefine Cybersecurity
“It’s a good acquisition for Symantec as they will be able to position Bluecoat security offering to their clients. It will also give them a better leverage against competition which had a larger security products portfolio.
Greg Clark, Blue Coat chief executive, will take the top job at Symantec, a position that has been vacant since April. The combined company will be the world’s largest enterprise security business by revenues.
Symantec announced in April that its CEO, Michael Brown, was stepping down as president and CEO amid falling revenue and trimmed forecasts.With Bluecoat CEO Greg Clark coming in as Symantec CEO, that would help bring in stability & growth to Symantec as well”, says Tushar Parekh, MD, Silicon Netsecure.
Investors backing the deal included private equity firm Silver Lake, which said it would double the $500 million investment in convertible notes in Symantec it announced in February.
Blue Coat is the market share leader and share gainer in Web Security with a widely recognized portfolio of integrated technologies serving as a trusted platform to deliver Cloud Generation Security to more than 15,000 customers worldwide.
The deal announced late Sunday comes after Blue Coat, which is based in Sunnyvale, California, earlier this month filed for an initial public offering of stock.
With the acquisition of Blue Coat, Symantec will enhance its leadership position to redefine the future of cybersecurity and set the pace for innovation industry-wide, believe industry experts.