Symantec to acquire MessageLabs, bolster SaaS

David M Williams
Thursday, 09 October 2008 04:01

IT Industry - Market

Symantec Corporation, producer of the popular Symantec Anti-Virus corporate suite and of the less-than-popular Norton consumer product, has today announced its intention to acquire global e-mail-filtering company MessageLabs. The move signals Symantec's growth as a provider of SaaS.

Symantec has been on the acquisition trail for several years with other notable purchases being Veritas - of backup fame - and Altiris - known for their enterprise network management and help-desk suite.

MessageLabs differs from the products Symantec is best known for due to its Software as a Service (SaaS) model. That is, MessageLabs requires no infrastructure or maintenance within your network save to redirect your incoming mail to hit their servers, not your own.

The MessageLabs machinery scrubs and cleans your inbound e-mail stream, delivering a spam- and virus-free feed to your corporate mail server.

MessageLabs report their customers include major financial institutions and legal firms as well as governments.

Additional MessageLabs services include a web proxy element and e-mail archiving.

In one sense MessageLabs was a competitor to Symantec's existing mail security product. Yet, the acquisition appears little to do with shutting down a competitor and more about bolstering Symantec's overall presence in the growing cloud space.

The CEO of MessageLabs, Adrian Chamberlain, said the interest by Symantec proved MessageLab's SaaS model worked and that the company was a leader in its field.

Chamberlain stated at the close of the acquisition Symantec would launch a new SaaS arm which combined MessageLabs and the existing Symantec solutions for online storage, online backup and remote access. This new arm will be lead by the MessageLabs management team thus giving their division a stronger product from day one.

The purchase price will be $USD 695 million but at this time the expected completion date has not been advised, no doubt with due diligence still in progress.