Sun, Computer Associates make acquisitions of software firms
Sun last week said it is buying SeeBeyond Technology for $387 million in cash in a move to boost its presence in the business integration software arena. Sun officials say the company is likely to buy more firms in this market.
Sun has been placing a lot of emphasis on the service-oriented architecture (SOA ) development model and hopes its acquisition of SeeBeyond will fill out its portfolio of products for developing, deploying and managing SOAs and other enterprise applications, according to company executives.
Sun Chairman and CEO Scott McNealy said his company had been looking around for a suitable acquisition to allow Sun to “go for the $5 billion enterprise application” market space.
“It’ll be a $2 billion market going forward,” says Sun President and COO Jonathan Schwartz. “We plan on taking half of it.”
Sun is likely to make other middleware acquisitions. “We’re certainly still quite flush with cash” to make further purchases, McNealy said. “Stay tuned as we continue to redefine this” strategy.
SeeBeyond’s Integrated Composite Application Network software suite runs natively on Java 2 Platform Enterprise Edition (J2EE). The software will become the sixth piece of Sun’s Java Enterprise System and will be known as the Sun Java System Integration Suite, according to McNealy.
Separately, Computer Associates announced it has acquired Tiny Software, a Santa Clara, Calif., maker of Windows-based desktop and server firewall products, for an undisclosed amount. Sam Curry, CA’s vice president of eTrust Security Management, says CA acquired Tiny primarily for its firewall software development kit to fill a gap in CA’s own product line.
It’s expected that the Tiny firewall technology will be added to desktop products that also combine CA’s anti-virus and anti-spyware software (acquired last year from PestPatrol).
In addition, CA will continue to support and market the Tiny Personal and Tiny Server firewalls directly to consumers and business. There currently are an estimated 2 million customers.
Tiny Software earlier this year announced its 2005 line of firewalls, detailing varying types of spyware-related protection, such as preventing code injection. More recently, it released Tiny Firewall 64, an offering for 64-bit Windows operating systems.
Martens is a correspondent with the IDG News Service.
