Check Point to acquire Zone Labs

On a day when EMC and BMC Software announced their own intended acquisitions, Check Point Software Technologies also got in the game with the $205 million acquisition of Zone Labs.

During a call to announce the deal, Gil Shwed, chairman and CEO of Check Point, explained that the Zone Lab product families, such as ZoneAlarm and Integrity, already cooperate well with and are greatly complimentary to Check Point’s own portfolio.

Shwed added the acquisition will expand Check Point’s reach to the consumer market with ZoneAlarm Pro, a PC firewall, and help get to non-Check Point VPN customers on the enterprise front with Zone Labs’ VPN security technologies. He also identified reaching desktops as the biggest opportunity of the deal — a market the enterprise-focused Check Point does not address today.

Earlier Monday, BMC Software announced it would acquire the assets of Magic Solutions from Network Associates in a $47 million cash deal.

Jim Grant, vice president and general manager of Remedy, a BMC subsidiary, explained the acquisition would expand BMC’s reach in the IT service management market down to small and midsize businesses.

“Eight-five percent of its [Magic Solutions] business is in areas Remedy doesn’t address,” said Grant. “There will be some integration between the two, but companies tend to have either/or.”

Also earlier Monday, EMC announced its intent to acquire VMware  in a deal valued at $635 million.

Howard Elias, executive vice president of new ventures at EMC, said the acquisition of VMware will help EMC customers virtualize its entire information infrastructure through the use of VMware’s technology, which allows a customer to put an operating system and its associated applications into a container — a virtual machine — that can be moved from server to server.