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Instant Insight July 5, 2006 |
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EMC To Acquire Security Specialist RSA EMC
Corporation has announced that it has reached a definitive agreement to
acquire RSA Security Inc. of Upon
completion of the acquisition it has been announced that RSA will operate as
EMC’s Information Security Division and will be headquartered in Timing / Cost The
deal is expected to be completed around the end of the third quarter or early
in the fourth quarter 2006 and is subject to the usual closing conditions and
regulatory approvals. Under the terms of the acquisition EMC will pay $28.00
per share in cash in exchange for each RSA share and the assumption of
outstanding options. This makes for an aggregate purchase price of just under
$2.1 billion, net of RSA’s existing cash balance (currently around $208
million). Net/Net Upon
completion this could prove to be a very significant development. Today all organizations,
irrespective of their size, are looking to address the complex, high-profile,
potentially time consuming and costly issues surrounding the securing of
information in the online Internet-connected world. EMC has stated that RSA’s
encryption and key management technology will be central to its strategy to
protect information, no matter where it resides inside or outside of an organization.
RSA has assembled a range of solutions to help authenticate identities,
authorize access to data and audit capabilities, as well as provide sophisticated
data encryption and key management tools. EMC continues to build its “Information
Infrastructure” platform to help organizations store, manage, and control
their valuable data and information assets. The company envisions information
lifecycle management being composed of six functional areas: Tiered Storage,
Protection Software, Data Mobility Software, Archiving Software, Content
Management Software, and Intelligent Information Management Software coupled
with tools to address Infrastructure Virtualization and Resource Management.
The addition of RSA to its expanding portfolio of software solutions will
enhance its capabilities in the area of information protection. There is today a real requirement for organizations
to ensure that they have secured access to corporate information. Regulation
and compliance drivers may be found at the route of the obligation to ensure
that only duly authorized individuals can access and amend almost any area of
corporate data storage. This need to restrict access and to ensure that access
is secured to only authorized individuals is an additional requirement over
and above the fundamental need to protect the integrity of the core data
itself. There is much scope for RSA to play an important role in data and
information security, especially in the areas of key management and
multi-factor authentication. It is clear that the combination of RSA’s
solutions to protect online identities and to help secure access to digital
assets along with EMC’s increasingly sophisticated storage management capabilities
has much potential. EMC has made no secret of its desire to
grow as a software company. The acquisitions of VMware (Server Virtualization),
Documentum (Content Management), Smarts and |