IBM is acquiring Spanugo, a provider of cloud cybersecurity posture management solutions. IBM will integrate Spanugo's software into its public cloud -- and promote the capabilities to financial services clientele. Financial terms were not disclosed.
This is M&A deal number 247 that ChannelE2E has covered so far in 2020. See the complete M&A deal list here.
This is IBM's first acquisition since CEO Arvind Krishna succeeded Ginni Rometty, ChannelE2E believes, though Krishna also spearheaded IBM's Red Hat acquisition before becoming CEO.
IBM Acquires Spanugo: Cloud Security, Compliance Details
Spanugo's Automated Security Assurance Platform (ASAP), according to the company, addresses these customer needs:
- Automates all aspects of security policy management, including automating control discovery;
- Supports traditional on-premises, cloud IaaS/PaaS, and SaaS architectures;
- Manages consistent, continuous policy checks across the environment;
- Includes regulatory and best practice controls sets including PCI, HIPAA, NIST and CIS “out of the box”;
- Is extensible to leverage existing technology investments and support new application and infrastructure quickly without software coding or scripting.
Spanugo, based in Santa Clara, California, has a partner network that spans systems integrators, IT auditors and resellers -- though the number of partner engagements isn't disclosed. The company was funded by The Fabric and IdeaSpring Capital.
In a press release about the deal, IBM said the addition of Spanugo software will "help accelerate the availability of a security control center that will enable IBM clients to define compliance profiles, manage controls and, in continuous real time, monitor compliance across their organization."
It sounds like customers in the healthcare, insurance, telco sectors should also expect Spanugo-related services in the months ahead.
IBM Acquires Spanugo: Executive Perspectives
In a prepared statement about the deal, Howard Boville, SVP of cloud at IBM, said:
"IBM is committed to building the industry's most secure and open public cloud for business. With the acquisition of Spanugo, we have taken another major step in advancing IBM's differentiated capabilities in security and compliance for our enterprise clients, including those in highly regulated industries. Bringing Spanugo's technology into our financial services public cloud will help provide our clients with evidence of their ongoing compliance, in real time."
Added Doc Vaidhyanathan, cofounder and chief product officer at Spanugo:
"Spanugo's strong domain knowledge and experience in security posture management is a natural complement to IBM's public cloud offerings. By joining IBM on its mission to be the most secure public cloud for the enterprise, we're able to deeply serve businesses across industries that require verifiable, audit-ready, real-time cybersecurity posturing."
IBM Multi-Cloud Strategy
The acquisition comes as IBM continues to promote a multi-cloud strategy that extends across IBM Cloud, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, other clouds and on-premises systems. Red Hat is largely the software that ties together the strategy.
