WatchGuard acquisition, ANZ sales up

Peter Dinham
Wednesday, 05 August 2009 10:04

Business IT - Technology

Network security vendor, WatchGuard Technologies, has acquired Canadian email and web security company, BorderWare to strengthen its position in the security market.

In a deal described as “complementary” to its own business, WatchGuard today announced it had acquired the privately-held BorderWare Technologies of Toronto, an e-mail and Web security content and threat management platform provider for mid-sized enterprises, government and service providers.

WatchGuard  CEO, Joe Wang, said today the acquisition was extremely complementary and will allow the company to “accelerate and further deliver on its vision of extending security solutions to protect corporate data, networks and applications.

“By acquiring BorderWare’s best in class messaging, content security and innovative ‘in-the-cloud’ security offerings, customers will now have a single source for comprehensive and complete security.”

Announcement of the acquisition comes a few days after WatchGuard reported that it had achieved a 20 per cent growth in sales revenue in Australia and New Zealand for the financial year ending 30 June 2009, with the company’s ANZ regional director, Scott Robertson, saying Watchguard’s Australian and New Zealand presence is “buoyant and set for another year of strong growth.”

Commenting on Watchguard’s acquisition of BorderWatch, Infonetics Research principal analyst, Jeff Wilson, said the combined company will be “well positioned to meet rigorous customer requirements.”

According to Wilson, WatchGuard has a history of technology and market leadership in the multifunction security appliance space, and BorderWare offers “innovative e-mail, messaging, content and web security solutions,” at a time, he said, when the threat landscape is changing dramatically and “customers are demanding easy to use security solutions with advanced firewall, VPN, web, and messaging security.”

CONTINUED page 2