StillSecure has been nailing it in the service provider segment with deals with XO, ViaWest, CoreSite, and others recently. StillSecure fundamentally believes that service providers – telcos, datacenter, cloud providers – will be the channel to market for security solutions and I agree. They have built an amazing set of solutions for colocation and dedicated server environments and have solutions that can apply to some higher-end cloud users. Today they are announcing a new host-based firewall management solution in conjunction with SoftLayer – a leader in the cloud market. Aimed at all cloud users, StillSecure’s new solution is the start of a major initiative for the company and is also a new category of solutions.
As most cloud users know, securing their systems is incredibly hard. The solutions are either just “cloud-washed” products that aren’t a fit or they are so expensive that they cannot fit within the elastic cloud model. StillSecure has taken nearly 12 years of history and experience and have built a product from the ground-up with the cloud users’ customer experience and profile in mind.
The solution, called Cloud SMS, is a free today and will expand into premium offerings very quickly. StillSecure and Cloud SMS are in the SoftLayer Tech Partner Marketplace, being promoted to SoftLayer’s 23,000 customers. The two companies are also beginning to explore offering the complete spectrum of StillSecure’s managed security services into SoftLayer’s broader offerings.
I’m excited for the StillSecure and SoftLayer teams – building a secure cloud is an incredibly important goal and one that many companies can take advantage of. Do yourself a favor – if you have any cloud instances out there, go download StillSecure’s cloud security product and please secure them.
The Feld job board has one for you today. If you are a sys admin and live in the Boulder area, StillSecure is interested in talking to you. The spec is below – if you fit it and are interested, please email Rhonda Grosz.
StillSecure, a network security software and services company is looking for a Systems Administrator for their Superior, CO office. We are looking for self-motivated, talented individuals who enjoy working in a fast paced environment. This individual will be responsible for managing, maintaining the IT infrastructure of the company and has at least 4 years of experience. He/she should be proficient in Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft Windows Desktop and Server operating systems. Networking, Linux and Mac OS experience is a plus.
On Monday, StillSecure announced that it has acquired ProtectPoint. ProtectPoint is a managed security service provider (MSSP) and immediately adds a portfolio of managed security products to StillSecure’s award-winning product arsenal. Alan Shimel, the Chief Strategy Officer of StillSecure, does an excellent job of explaining the reasons for the acquisition in his post titled StillSecure acquires ProtectPoint, entering the MSSP market – Why?
This is the second time in less than a month that a company I’m on the board of has made an acquisition. At the end of January, in my post titled Rally Software is a Buyer I wrote:
“[With regard to an acquisition strategy] I’m seeing this pattern with a number of the established companies I’m an investor in. Having gone through this cycle several times and had success and failure with acquisition driven strategies, I’ve got a clear view on when and how it can work successfully. I’m not interested in garbage truck mergers (two crappy companies that get jammed together to hope something good comes out of it) – all of my energy is focused on having a market leader pick up a complementary technology or market “asset” that helps accelerate the product or market roadmap.”
As with Rally’s acquisition of 6th Sense Analytics, StillSecure has been working on building out a set of managed security offerings around their product set. The demand for managed security services (or security as a service, or whatever you want to call it) has been steadily increasing and StillSecure decided to explore a buy vs. build approach to accelerate their entry into the market. StillSecure went searching for a company to acquire and found a great fit (functionally and culturally) with ProtectPoint and now has a fully built out and well regarded MSSP offering as part of its product mix.
Having spent some time with Steve Harris, the CEO of ProtectPoint, I’m really excited about what he and his team bring to StillSecure. I also have another person to hang out besides Alan when I head to Florida for a break from winter. Steve and team – welcome aboard!