The waiting and guessing games are over; today, HP announced its intent to buy security management software leader ArcSight for $1.5 billion. I didn’t think HP would pull the trigger on another billion+ dollar acquisition before hiring a new CEO, but obviously I was wrong.
ArcSight is a true enterprise software company. As I recall, many of the early ArcSight management team members actually came from HP OpenView. With this model in mind, ArcSight went beyond technology and invested early in top field engineers, security experts, and sales people. This vaulted the company to a leadership position and it never looked back.
For HP, ArcSight fits with its overall focus on IT operations software solutions for Business Technology Optimization. In the future, security information will be one of many inputs that helps CIOs improve IT management and responsiveness. It won’t happen overnight, but think of all sources of IT management data (i.e., log data, SNMP, network flow data, configuration data, etc.) available for query, analysis, and reporting in a common repository. This is what HP has in mind over the long haul.
In the meantime, HP should get plenty of ArcSight bang-for-the-buck over the next 12-24 months by:
In spite of its security services and thought leadership, HP’s name has been notably absent from IT security leadership discussions in the past. ArcSight should change that.
A few other quick thoughts:
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Tags: ArcSight, Check Point, CNCI, F5, FISMA, HP, Oracle, Riverbed
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