EMC Acquires RSA
EMC, my former employer, announced it was acquiring RSA for $2.1B. It’s their ballsiest (sp?) move to date. They’ve been talking about buying into the security wheel for sometime, but I thought it would continue around acqusitions like Enterprise DRM vendor Authentica.
I would suggest that acquisition of RSA is the most radical yet complimentary acquisition by EMC to date. Legato made perfect sense. VMWare was brilliant, but makes total sense. Documentum? 2nd most radical, but brilliantly executed.
After this acquisition, EMC is probably in top 5 largest software companies by revenue in the world. Not too bad for a company originally known for storage hardware. I’m curious as to who else was involved in the bidding war. Aparently, it was fierce.
But don’t forget about EMC as a services company. They have quietly been snapping up professional services firms in the recent months. This is a company determined to win the low-margin hardware game by combining them with high-margin software and services.
Update: This BusinessWeek article mentions that the other bidder was Symantec. This wouldn’t be the first time that Veritas/Symantec lost a key bidding war against EMC. See VMWare…