Ivanti Buying MobileIron, Pulse Secure in Cybersecurity Push
Company looks to expand its endpoint security portfolio as remote work continues to expand
Ivanti is buying cybersecurity firms MobileIron and Pulse Secure to bolster its capabilities in secure endpoints at a time when remote work is on a sharp rise.
The Lowdown: Ivanti announced Monday that it’ll pay $872 million for MobileIron and an undisclosed amount for Pulse Secure, with MobileIron’s board of directors already approving the deal. The announcement comes days after reports began emerging that MobileIron was on the verge of being bought.
The Details: The acquisitions, which will need regulatory approval before they close, will significantly expand Ivanti’s efforts to provide autonomous IT and security operations that enable enterprises to automatically discover, manage, and secure PCs and mobile devices from the cloud to the edge. The move comes as the COVID-19 pandemic forced an immediate and large shift to remote working, a change that’s likely to continue to a great degree after the public health crisis passes.
Salt Lake City-based Ivanti offers unified endpoint management, zero trust security, and enterprise service management to organizations. Ivanti offers its Neurons automation platform for everything from discovery to workspaces and self-healing.
MobileIron, based in Mountain View, California, will bring its unified endpoint management solutions to the new company while Pulse, headquartered in San Jose, California, offers secure access and mobile security solutions.
Ivanti also will be able to expand its reach in the cybersecurity field, with MobileIron bringing with it more than 20,000 customers and Pulse another 24,000-plus.
Ivanti Chairman and CEO Jim Schaper will lead the combined company.
The Impact: The pandemic has had a rapid and far-reaching impact on business models, with no change being more prominent than the move to teleworking. Most employees in the late winter were sent home to work to comply with government shutdown orders and help slow the spread of the coronavirus. Companies have had to adapt to the new decentralized workforce and many are now saying that remote work will continue to various degrees even after the pandemic passes. A Gartner survey found that 47% of business leaders will give employees the choice of working from home permanently and 82% will make working from home an option part of the time.
Enabling such a highly distributed workforce to be productive and secure has become a key focus of businesses and their channel partners.
Background: Ivanti, which is backed by private equity firms Clearlake Capital Group and TA Associates, was founded in 2017 when Landesk and Heat Software merged. According to ZoomInfo, the company has about 1,700 employees and $414 million in annual revenue. The vendor boasts that 78 Fortune 100 companies use its software.
MobileIron has about 900 customers and had 2019 revenue of more than $205 million. Pulse, with more than 650 employees, claims that 80% of the Fortune 500 companies use its products. It has $254 million in annual revenue, according to ZoomInfo.
The Buzz: “By combining MobileIron and Pulse Secure with Ivanti, we are creating a leader in the large and growing unified endpoint management, security, and enterprise service management markets. We now have the most comprehensive set of software solutions that address the growing market demand for the future of work, where working from anywhere on any device type is the new normal,” Schaper said. “With the integration of our industry knowledge and complementary product offerings, Ivanti will be well-positioned to provide our expansive customer base with the critical tools needed to tackle IT challenges in the new normal.”
“We are thrilled to join forces with Ivanti and Pulse Secure in a combination that will accelerate our ability to help organizations quickly and securely embrace the future of work, in which employees, IT infrastructure, and customers are everywhere – and mobile devices provide access to everything,” MobileIron CEO Simon Biddiscombe said. “Bringing our solutions together will enable organizations to easily secure users, devices, data, and access in the Everywhere Enterprise. We’re confident that this transaction will deliver comprehensive security for the next-generation workforce, provide enhanced opportunities for our team of employees, and better serve our customer base. Additionally, we believe this combination represents the best path forward for our stockholders and MobileIron.”
“Over the course of Pulse Secure’s evolution, we have established ourselves as a leading provider of secure access solutions to enterprises and service providers, with a dedicated group of employees, a focused strategy complemented by strong execution, and an integrated portfolio of offerings designed to improve customers’ productivity, provide them with greater visibility, and improve their compliance posture,” Pulse Secure CEO Sudhakar Ramakrishna said. “Siris has been a committed partner working side-by-side with us throughout our journey, and we are grateful for the team’s support and added value to our business. As it relates to the future of work, Ivanti shares our belief that ‘remote is the new normal’ and our commitment to building secure access solutions that offer simple and unified user experiences.”
“We are pleased with this culmination of our investment in, and partnership with, Pulse Secure,” said Hilton Romanski, partner of Siris. “Sudhakar and the rest of the Pulse Secure management team have done an exemplary job of building a world-class, market-leading security business from the foundational technology that Siris originally acquired. Pulse Secure’s uncompromising ability to meet customer needs resulting from digital business and pandemic-related demand for distributed work, while simultaneously executing its long-term growth strategy, is a clear testament to the quality and expertise of the company and its leadership team.”
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>Pulse Secure Eases Access to Cloud, Data Center Applications
>MobileIron Boosts Security for iOS, Android Devices
>HP Unveils PCs and Printers for Remote Workforces
