News
McAfee, Inc. to Acquire SafeBoot B.V. for $350 Million
October 2007 by Marc Jacob
McAfee, Inc. announced a definitive agreement to acquire privately owned SafeBoot B.V. for $350 million in cash. SafeBoot is an enterprise security software vendor that is a leader in the rapidly growing market for data protection via encryption and access control.
SafeBoot delivers enterprise-class encryption and leads the mobile security market with its fully integrated end-point security and content encryption solutions. Adding SafeBoot’s technologies and products will extend McAfee’s Security Risk Management vision, and position McAfee as the leading security vendor to offer data loss prevention and encryption at the end-point with scalable centralized management.
The rationale for the transaction is as follows:
With the acquisition of SafeBoot, McAfee becomes the leader in a
multi-billion data protection market that is highly under-penetrated
McAfee has more than 100 million desktops under management and believes
SafeBoot offers a strong complement to its existing offerings
SafeBoot’s end-point encryption franchise coupled with McAfee’s Data
Loss Prevention and ePolicyOrchestrator management capability creates a
compelling, industry-leading data protection solution
McAfee, with its worldwide distribution network, expects to leverage
SafeBoot’s highly acclaimed product line which is currently offered in
over 20 languages and in 76 countries
Encryption addresses all three of McAfee’s market segments from the
enterprise of one to the enterprise of thousands
Finally, SafeBoot’s mobile phone offerings will help accelerate
McAfee’s current mobile solutions by allowing McAfee to offer a new
comprehensive suite of integrated device protection and data security.
Based on conservative assumptions, McAfee expects this transaction to be dilutive to 2008 GAAP earnings per share and neutral to 2008 non-GAAP earnings per share. Following the closing, SafeBoot’s technologies and McAfee’s Data Loss Prevention solutions will become the foundation for a new Data Protection product business unit, headed by Gerhard Watzinger who will report to McAfee CEO Dave DeWalt.
SafeBoot is the encryption vendor to more than 4,200 customers, including more than 150 listed in the Fortune 500. Its customer base is geographically diverse, with about 47 percent in Europe, the Middle East and Asia, 29 percent in North America, and 23 percent in Asia Pacific. The company retained almost all of its customers in 2006.
The SafeBoot Data Protection Suite enables users to encrypt individual files and folders as well as the entire local hard drive for the widest possible range of mobile devices, including laptops, smart phones, USB drives and PDAs. SafeBoot data protection suite also enables users to encrypt file servers and provides protection to ensure that confidential files remain secure as they move throughout an organization. The company has focused on the enterprise market and offers centralized management as well as the ability to integrate with existing IT systems, support for a wide range of platforms, multiple languages and comprehensive auditing. McAfee plans to integrate these products into ePolicy Orchestrator (ePO), McAfee’s centralized management console for enterprise customers. By adding SafeBoot’s encryption technology and enterprise management tools, McAfee will further advance its enterprise data protection offerings, and pursue SafeBoot’s significant and untapped opportunities in the SMB and consumer markets. This combination will enable McAfee customers to deploy encryption technology that is integrated with McAfee security solutions, while providing SafeBoot customers with the ability to integrate McAfee products into their current SafeBoot deployment.
The acquisition is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2007 pending regulatory reviews.
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