Sophos is all set to buy Cyberoam for a reported amount of approximately Rs 430 crore, according to reports published in mainline daily of India.
Private equity giant Carlyle Group is going to sell its majority stake in network security provider Cyberoam Technologies to British American company Sophos in a deal estimated at around $70 million, signalling rising M&A interest in Indian IT products space, said the report.
Carlyle owns majority shares in Cyberoam, which was spun out of Ahmedabad-based IT product company Elitecore Technologies, which continues to hold minority interest in the network security provider as per the report.
When contacted to respond to the news development, the official at Cyberoam headquartered at Ahmedabad did not respond to the mails.However industry sources and reports in the online space have confirmed that the deal has been signed off.
The UTM space has always been the cornerstone of most big companies since past half a decade. When Dell acquired SonicWall a couple of years ago, it was a big news in the security space, given that a colossal company like Dell was buying out a security player.
Interestingly, Sophos acquired UTM company Astaro in mid of 2011. This acquisition of Cyberoam (whose product roadmap and security vision is quite similar to Astaro) after three years by Sophos is surprising. It is also a bold move by the company to gain its dominance in growing UTM market.
With two ‘UTM’ brands – Astaro and now Cyberoam under Sophos, the security landscape is getting more consolidated for enterprises to make a choice of ‘network security’ brand for their infrastructure.
For channel partners too, there are relatively lesser UTM brands than four years ago. The deal could possibly see a ruffling of partners dealing with other UTM brands which is the usual case whenever M & A deal happens – especially if the company acquired is a 100% channel centric company like Cyberoam.
Source: Channel World.in
