Flexera Acquires Secunia To Create One-Stop Shop For Software Licensing, Vulnerability Management

As more companies start to combat cybersecurity challenges at the application level, Flexera Software has acquired Secunia to create a one-stop-shop for software licensing and vulnerability management.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The acquisition brings together Secunia's software vulnerability management solution with Flexera's software licensing, compliance and installation solutions. That's a new approach for the industry, which traditionally has kept the two separate, but is an increasingly important combination as cybersecurity issues continue to rise around application vulnerabilities, Flexera President and CEO Mark Bishof said.

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"We believe that the industry enterprise customers should and will move [IT asset management], [IT systems management] and security in the same organization. ...The combination of those things makes this acquisition a really compelling one and just in time. We're going to be ahead of the wave and ahead of the industry, and it's going to make it really hard for our competition to compete in this space," Bishof said.

"We think this is a game-changing acquisition," Bishof continued. "Traditionally customers have organized their IT asset management systems and security in totally different organizations. ... We are taking a big, bold step forward and looking at this and saying we can discover all hardware, software, firmware and now security vulnerabilities on an enterprise network."

The combined companies will total $250 million in revenue with around 750 employees. Flexera, Itasca, Ill., will keep the Secunia product set and employee base in Copenhagen and Minnesota intact and work to fully integrate the solutions with the Flexera portfolio over the next quarter, Bishof said.

For partners, that's important because a single platform allows for a more seamless managed service offering, Bishof said. On top of that, partners have the ability to sell security on top of the application management practices they might already have in place as well as add security vulnerability management to compliance and audit offerings, said Tim Boudreau, vice president of global strategic alliances at Flexera.

"We fully intend to get a lot of market velocity [around the channel]," Boudreau said.

Paul Baguley, managing director of advisory services at Chicago-based KPMG, said KPMG has been working with Flexera since last November and the addition of a direct link to security is a "good fit" for the company. While he didn't know the Secunia product itself very well, Baguley said that asset management and security go hand in hand as effective software vulnerability management requires a complete inventory of software.

"Certainly, the link between security and software asset management is underexplored," Baguley said. "It’s a good move and I think as a whole those engaged in [software asset management] could do a better job of tying it back to security and cost and compliance," he continued.

KPMG will be looking to explore the opportunities around in its fiscal 2016, he said.

PUBLISHED SEPT. 15, 2015