Since 2001, EMC has been sitting on cash and slowly but surely playing the ultimate game of chess – working towards a checkmate in the IT solutions space. After acquiring Documentum, VMWare, RSA, Iomega, Datadomain, and now Archer, EMC is positioning to accomplish what Symantec has all but failed to do… leverage complimentary emerging leaders and provide enterprises with a single vendor for IT automation, storage, and security.
It is possible that their latest move could be a game changer in the ITRM space with the acquisition of Archer, assuming that they will be able to overcome potential human capital, and content & licensing challenges. We’ll update you with more on this potential hiccup and it’s potential impact to you once we can publicly do so.
Consumer confidence is up in December, home prices are up for the 5th month in a row, F100 CEO’s see a light at the end of the tunnel, and Indianapolis based ExactTarget has received $75 M in funding since October. Budgets are expected to oh-so-slightly increase to 2.5% gains, and 39% expect to add IT positions.
It sounds like its time for us to begin seeing cash hungry industry giants make a move. Sure enough, we now have.
Article on EMC and Archer here
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6 Comments
Pingback by Tweets that mention EMC & Archer Pave Way for 2010 Consolidation - Rook Consulting -- Topsy.com — January 6, 2010 @ 13:23
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Edward, J.J. Thompson. J.J. Thompson said: RT @rookconsulting EMC & Archer Pave Way for 2010 Consolidation – Rook Consulting http://is.gd/5P3Dh [...]
Pingback by Archer and EMC: More To The Story | Brightfly, Inc. — January 7, 2010 @ 14:18
[...] We also agree with the guys over at Rook that this might mark a bit of a thaw in security deals. The price tag (rumored to be anywhere from $120 million to $225 million) has woken the sleeping VC giants which have started sniffing around this space for interesting start-ups to fund. Specifically, Thomas Weisel Venture Partners, who has a good bit wrapped up in BigFix could arrange a marriage with an up-and-coming IT GRC player or maybe even an established one such as Agiliance who already has an integration story. Speaking of Agiliance, with their partnership with McAfee, and McAfee’s churn around IT GRC we think that their integration story holds some weight in the context of state-based security and compliance management and could be picked up fairly easily. A start-up in the space that bears mention is Lockpath. Founded by two early members of the Archer team, Chris Caldwell and Chris Goodwin have deep experience in this market and were recently named Microsoft Start-up of the Day. [...]
Comment by Mark — January 7, 2010 @ 15:31
Paul Stamp (SIEM evangelist at EMC) seems to be very excited about the deal. It will be interesting to see how many titles of people who have nothing to do with GRC are now going to be GRC expert at EMC (no offense to Paul).
from http://tokensecurityguy.typepad.com/token_security_guy/2010/01/token-security-guy-is-now-token-grc-guywell-kinda.html
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Comment by J.Thompson — January 7, 2010 @ 15:40
… its no surprise that Paul is excited. The legs that Archer will get when coupled with the distribution network that EMC has in place will be exciting to watch. The challenge will be connecting the dots and integrating… and more importantly, maintaining the talent that is the brains behind Archer’s current success.
[[Does anyone know what is going on with the retention / transition plan? Please comment back if you do.]]
It was also interesting to read CA’s take on this whole thing by their own Sumner Blount. Sumner’s bottom line to EMC’s move into the GRC space:
“We recognized the importance of integration for cost-effective GRC management, and have made this a foundation of our overall IT GRC strategy. EMC/RSA’s move validates what CA knew long ago.”
How’s that for a confident jab?
http://community.ca.com/blogs/grc/archive/2010/01/07/emc-rsa-archer-the-grc-consolidation-trend-continues.aspx#leavecomment
Comment by Joe Fantuzzi — January 11, 2010 @ 10:50
Hi JJ,
Thanks for a thoughtful commentary on the GRC space and the RSA acquisition. As you know, I am the newly hired CEO at Agiliance. Thrilled to start of my tenure with such news from Archer. Their body of work is strong and we at Agiliance, along with Archer, established leadership focused on customer success in this market segment. As the industry knows, Agiliance’s focus is a pure play platform and applications that preserve investments in IT and security, and minimize TCO. We remain the independent leader.
I read with humor Summer Blount’s commentary on knowing the market well ahead of Archer. The CA product is based on the Niku Clarity solution, purchased in 2005. I know the ex CEO and management at Niku well, and frankly this is a stretch. More importantly, Clarity is very similar to Archer, but without the domain knowledge. Agiliance rarely sees CA. They offer low domain and high TCO. That is a great formula for customer success.
Regarding integration, investment bankers tell Agiliance the Archer development team will report to the RSA technical team, and the RSA sales and marketing team will be part of the RSA sales team. I would have expected the Archer sales and marketing team to be more aligned with EMC Global Services, since that appears a better fit. Regardless, Archer as we know doesn’t appear to be large enough to be left standalone like VMWare, RSA or DCMT.
Comment by Paul Stamp — January 12, 2010 @ 07:23
No offense taken guys! Nice to see that someone other than a close family member reads my blog. Luckily, during my time at Forrester I used to work closely with folks like Mike Rasmussen, Chris McClean so I’m not completely a newbie to the GRC space. After 12 years I’ve never claimed to be an expert in the security space, so you certainly won’t hear any self proclaimed GRC “expertise” coming from me – just a stream of semi connected thoughts, especially for those trying to get their heads around this stuff.
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