The San Diego, California-based information security vendor completed the purchase of its UK-based rival at the beginning of this month and has already announced that, given the degree of overlap in their activities, there will be a reduction in headcount.
However, it now looks as if another casualty of the consolidation will be SurfControl’s partners, who either OEM or offer as an additional service access to its UEL blacklist. The OEM partner list includes the likes of IBM, Blue Coat, Borderware and Finjan. Also listed by SurfControl as technology partners, without actually OEMing its technology, are the likes of Cisco (via its IronPort acquisition), Check Point, Citrix and Juniper, and the future of all these relationships appears to be in doubt.
We’re still evaluating, but we do think that it [SurfControl’s technology] is core intellectual property, said Leo Cole, Websense’s VP of marketing, arguing that the decision will come down to a choice between business and strategy.
Cole said a decision one way or the other will need to be made within the next quarter, reiterating that our discovery technology is important intellectual property, which together with SurfControl’s on-demand and email filtering services represents an unparalleled source of information on the internet.
Our View
Will Websense put an end to all the OEM relationships SurfControl had built up? One school of thought is that URL blacklists are pretty commoditized anyway, so what harm is there in having as many companies as possible OEMing the technology? As such, it could be that Cole is just seeking to up the ante in preparation for any conversations regarding a renewal of the OEM contracts.
Another view, however, is that they have the potential of becoming more valuable going forward, as companies seek to detect and block attempts to export sensitive data via FTP and other protocols to dodgy websites. Given Websense’s avowed intent to be a leader in data leakage prevention, this may be behind Websense’s thinking and the possibility that it will discontinue its OEM business.
