The company, like several others in the security industry, has recognized that software agent consolidation is something buyers continue to cry out for, and therefore plans on building and buying to add functionality to its own agents.
The first deal on this path is buying the Stat Guardian Vulnerability Management suite, along with staff and a 3,000-company customer book, from Harris, where it was a non-core product.
The dollar price of the deal, which doubles the size of PatchLink’s US federal government business, was undisclosed, but Clawson said it was valued at 1.9 times the Harris unit’s trailing 12 months revenue, and four times its predicted 12-month cashflow.
The deal is somewhat unusual in that the Harris vulnerability management suite was actually just an OEM version of PatchLink’s own patch management software, albeit superior on a couple of counts.
Clawson said that the PatchLink management user interface and reporting engine will be swapped out for the acquired Harris software.
The primary driver was the management front-end, he said. They wanted us to OEM it, but we really wanted to own it.
The deal also brings on board a vulnerability scanning engine for unmanaged hosts, and a database of vulnerability remediations that will boost PatchLink’s current database from 15,000 to 19,000.
These changes will help PatchLink more easily integration future acquisitions, as the company boosts its agent software with new functionality, Clawson indicated.
The company plans to increase the number of change and configuration management features it offers, as well as adding license metering. It is also planning to increase the security of its agents, enabling them to protect vulnerabilities for which no patch exists, like a host intrusion prevention system.
Much of this functionality is expected to be acquired. Clawson said PatchLink is looking aggressively on acquisition front, and that there are a number of reasonably priced smaller companies that could make good fits.
PatchLink is looking for some of these deals outside its native US, where technology, staff and established local customer bases could be more modestly priced.
Clawson knows a thing or two about consolidation.
In his previous job, as CEO of firewall maker Cyberguard, he launched an unsuccessful hostile takeover bid for chief rival Secure Computing Corp. Then, a year later, when the stock market had shifted, he helped engineer Cyberguard’s friendly takeover by Secure.
