Following on the $7 billion and a bit acquisition of mcAfee by Intel last month, it is now the turn of Arcsight, a data correlation engine, to get acquired by HP for $1.5 billion, a bargain then! This follows a trend for large non IT Security companies to step into the security field.

What I found interesting though is the difference in vocabulary used by the two companies, actually, by the Arcsight current CEO Tom Reilly. HP speaks about “acquisition”, which really it’s what it is; whereas Tom’s email to Arcsight clients speaks about a “merger”. I guess this is standard practise when the smaller party get “swallowed” by a bigger company.

I’d be interested to see what changes this “merger” will bring to Arcsight and if any of the HP Operation Manager technology (aka OpenView) will find its way in a future Arcsight ESM release… or vice versa!

HP Announcement

Tom Reilly (Arcsight) Letter similar to the one sent to its customer.