IBM is buying BigFix, adding to its run of acquisitions in the past several years of security companies.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed. BigFix has received $33 million in venture financing since its beginnings in 1997. Bloomberg estimates the acquisition price at $400 million.
BigFix is based out of Emeryville, Ca. It provides security intelligence software for managing an enterprise across its computing endpoints, meaning its personal computers, servers and desktops. For example, it can monitor if a PC is out of compliance, needs security fixes or requires an update.
IBM has made a series of acquisitions in the security market over the past few years. This is the company’s 11th since 2006. BigFix joins the IBM Tivoli software group.
BigFix competes primarily with Microsoft and Symantec in the security world.
IBM’s message about a smarter planet plays into this latest acquisition. IBM is building its own vision of a smart data center. In this latest acquisition it means the automation in some respects of the admin process required for the thousands of endpoints in an enterprise environment.
It also has a “green,” angle to it as its technology can provide energy savings.
Douglas Washburn of Forrester:
“So why is PC power management important to IBM customers?
While IBM already offers its customers energy-efficient servers and their “Tivoli Monitoring for Energy Management” software for the data center, bigger opportunities for savings exist across distributed IT assets, like PCs, monitors, phones, and printers. In fact, Forrester finds that distributed IT assets consume 55% of IT’s total energy footprint versus only 45% in the data center. And the extent of these savings can add up. For example, BigFix cites a large US public school district with 80,000 PCs saving $2.1 million in annual energy costs (or $26 per PC per year) using BigFix’s Power Management software.”
