Barracuda bites further into SaaS with Purewire deal

Managed and hosted security services are taking off in a big way

Security appliance specialist Barracuda Networks has acquired web-based security gateway developer Purewire Inc.

Barracuda said that it will use the acquisition to bolster its line of web security services. In addition to its network appliance line, the company is also looking to build its web services business.

"The addition of Purewire's award-winning web security-as-a-service platform to our security product portfolio greatly enhances our ability to provide customers with the best solution for their network environment," said Barracuda president and chief executive Dean Drako.

"Further, this combination expands our set of software-as-a-service solutions, provides new infrastructure and technology, and creates enormous potential to extend our cloud services across all of our rapidly growing product lines."

Paul Roberts, a senior analyst at 451 Group, praised the deal, noting that it would give Barracuda's web security group a boost while also allowing Purewire's founders and investors to cash out in an increasingly crowded market.

"Barracuda's rationale for this deal is straightforward enough: customers from small firms on up are interested in new deployment options for their security wares, including managed and hosted security services," he wrote in a blog post.

"This is the same logic behind Symantec's purchase of MessageLabs, and McAfee's purchase of MXLogic.

"For Purewire, the cost of taking on more funding to compete against the likes of Symantec and McAfee, not to mention Cisco, Google and Microsoft down the road, must have been daunting."

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.