PatchLink's Harris buy could help both companies

The deal is part of a corporate strategy to move beyond single-product offerings, said Pat Clawson, president and CEO of PatchLink.

"Our intent was to start dealing with the agent pollution that was out there and to start consolidating power into our solution by rolling up what would have otherwise been thought of as point solutions," Clawson said.

"In order to do that, one of the most important things was to have an exceptionally scalable end-tier management front end, and one of our primary acquisition targets was the management front end."

He said that PatchLink considered five companies for the acquisition, but ultimately chose the vulnerability division of Harris due to a pre-existing partnership between the two companies.

"They had been OEMing our solution for several years and had already built the management front end and integrated it with our full patch-remediation offering," he said.

As a result, the company was able to make the suite immediately available to customers upon purchase of the new business unit. PatchLink acquired approximately 20 new employees through the deal, for which it is not disclosing financial details.

Several analysts said the deal was favorable not only for PatchLink, but also for Harris Corporation. Harris was having a difficult time gaining traction outside of its government sector sweet spot, Paul Stamp of Forrester Research told SCMagazine.com.

He said that PatchLink’s expertise in the private sector will help make the vulnerability management suite more attractive to enterprises.

"I think this deal makes sense," Stamp said. "It helps PatchLink close the loop on the security configuration management lifecycle."

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