Sophos Acquires Canadian Anti-Spam Developer

With the $23 million cash purchase of ActiveState, Sophos moves to straddlethe anti-virus and anti-spam fence.

Enterprise anti-virus specialist Sophos on Wednesday shelled out $23 million in cash to acquire Canada-based anti-spam developer ActiveState as part of plans to offer “consolidated protection” from the blended threat of email borne attacks.

Sophos, which maintains U.S. headquarters in Lynnfield, Mass., said its anti-virus protection tools would be married with ActiveState’s flagship PureMessage enterprise anti-spam software to create a single, consolidated offering to its corporate clients.

The transaction signals a further move by enterprise anti-virus vendors to expand into the ultra-competitive anti-spam market.

Sophos president Stephen Orenberg described the deal as a no-brainer. “We’ve been heavily involved in anti-virus software on the corporate side and we’ve seen the spam problem gaining traction. It is more nefarious in corporate enterprises than ever before. The major virus outbreaks have been email borne,” Orenberg told internetnews.com.

“It is definitely in our best interest to have an anti-spam solution. The gray areas between anti-virus and anti-spam have become more blurred. [Our corporate] customers want to deal with one vendor with an integrated solution,” Orenberg added.

Among large corporations, he said the adoption rate for anti-virus protection was at 100 percent while anti-spam software was showing adoption growth, in the range of 90 percent. “They’re asking for an integrated solution to expand the perimeter defense,” Orenberg added.

Sophos has been offering anti-spam protection to its clients through OEM relationships and partnership deals with individual companies, including ActiveState. But, once the decision was made to marry the two technologies into a single offering, Orenberg said ActiveState became the obvious acquisition target.

Sophos will retain all of ActiveState’s 100-plus employees. The company’s Vancouver headquarters will serve as a satellite office for marketing, research and development.

In an interview, ActiveState director of product management Chris Kraft said the PureMessage software would be merged with Sophos’ mail manager product and fully integrated by the end of the year under the PureMessage Banner. PureMessage currently supports AIX, HP-UX, FreeBSD, Linux and Solaris.

“Spam represents 40 percent of the mail stream entering into an organization. For ISP customers, it is a as high as 70 percent. That’s a shocking reality,” Kraft said, adding that when virus attacks are added to the equation, it creates an “enormous traffic burden” on a company’s mail infrastructure.

ActiveState generates about 70 percent of its revenues from the PureMessage product line and also makes money from providing tools for open source language programmers.

Sophos said ActiveState’s product lines for open source programmers would continue to be developed and marketed under the ActiveState brand.

ActiveState president Steve Munford with join Sophos’ as Global vice president of messaging with responsibility for the anti-spam element of the combined business.

Subscribe to get your daily business insights

Whitepapers

US Mobile Streaming Behavior
Whitepaper | Mobile

US Mobile Streaming Behavior

5y

US Mobile Streaming Behavior

Streaming has become a staple of US media-viewing habits. Streaming video, however, still comes with a variety of pesky frustrations that viewers are ...

View resource
Winning the Data Game: Digital Analytics Tactics for Media Groups
Whitepaper | Analyzing Customer Data

Winning the Data Game: Digital Analytics Tactics for Media Groups

5y

Winning the Data Game: Digital Analytics Tactics f...

Data is the lifeblood of so many companies today. You need more of it, all of which at higher quality, and all the meanwhile being compliant with data...

View resource
Learning to win the talent war: how digital marketing can develop its people
Whitepaper | Digital Marketing

Learning to win the talent war: how digital marketing can develop its peopl...

2y

Learning to win the talent war: how digital market...

This report documents the findings of a Fireside chat held by ClickZ in the first quarter of 2022. It provides expert insight on how companies can ret...

View resource
Engagement To Empowerment - Winning in Today's Experience Economy
Report | Digital Transformation

Engagement To Empowerment - Winning in Today's Experience Economy

1m

Engagement To Empowerment - Winning in Today's Exp...

Customers decide fast, influenced by only 2.5 touchpoints – globally! Make sure your brand shines in those critical moments. Read More...

View resource