Symantec dynasty grows with MessageLabs acquisition
Technology vendor trends:
- Big fish swallow up little fish—But only if little fish are tasty
- Location, location, location—The Cloud is the upscale place to live
- Keeping up with the Jones's—I want what my competitors have
Symantec's acquisition of MessageLabs satisfies each of these trends.
Symantec's messaging security venture started with their anti-virus products for Microsoft Exchange and IBM Domino, followed by acquired offspring:
- Spam filtering giant Brightmail in 2004
- Anti-spam router vendor TurnTide in 2004
- Storage player Veritas in 2005, which only months earlier acquired email and instant messaging archiving vendor KVS.
- Instant messaging security and management leader IMLogic in 2006.
- Data leakage vendor Vontu in 2007.
- and now MessageLabs, which strengthens their current Hosted Mail Security offering.
McAfee, IBM and Google also purchased property in the neighborhood—each through similar acquisitions.
The messaging security market (initially focused solely on email security) spans across instant messaging, Web and peer-to-peer messaging. Services to secure and manage social media technologies will start to enter the fray, as the differentiations between different forms of e-communication become blurred.