More Messaging Acquisitions

By Stephanie Jordan
in

In the Sep 4 issue of Messaging Newswire we announced several recent acquisitions. We have more news to share. On Friday Cisco announced its intent to acquire privately held Jabber. According to the announcement the acquisition will enable Jabber’s presence and messaging technology to be integrated into Cisco platforms including WebEx Connect and Cisco Unified Communications.

Not formally announced but confirmed by a Quest Software spokesperson, Akonix Systems, Inc. became part of Quest a couple of weeks ago. “It’s exciting for us because Akonix provides additional functionality for archiving public IM conversations and protection for real-time communications.”

Lastly, on Monday Secure Computing Corporation announced that it has entered into agreement to be acquired by McAfee, Inc.. According to the announcement, McAfee, with the pending acquisition of Secure Computing, expects to become one of the largest network security players and will strengthen its position in security risk management (SRM). The proposed transaction is valued at approximately $465 million USD. “I believe the combination of the two companies will allow us to reap the benefits of a worldwide dedicated sales team three times our size, best-in-class security research, greater partner distribution and enhanced cross-selling opportunities,” says Dan Ryan, president and chief executive officer, Secure Computing. “Combined, we believe we will become a leader in the network security space.” Following the closing of the acquisition, Secure Computing’s technologies will be incorporated under McAfee’s Network Security product business unit, and will be headed by Ryan.

Published September 25, 2008