IBM is about to acquire Guardium for $225 Million, according to Haaretz. Guardium provides software solutions for database activity monitoring, security, and auditing. This is the largest high-tech Israeli exit in 2009 and a great achievement for Guardium’s investors, who will be getting 10x returns on their investments. Guaridum has raised $21 million since its inception in 2002 (then called Defendo). Main shareholders include: Ascent Venture Partners (Geoffrey Oblak), Cedar Fund, Cisco Systems, Kreos Capital, Log-On Software Limited, StageOne Ventures, Veritas Venture Partners (Gill Zaphrir) as well as the company’s founders Amnon Keinan and Lior Tal (who has left the company).
Guardium’s products are currently deployed in 350 data centers worldwide, including more than 60 Global 500 and Fortune 1000 companies in government, financial services, energy, manufacturing, telecommunications, pharmaceuticals, transportation, biotech, and media and entertainment sectors.
The company’s flagship products include:
- HealthGuard, which creates vulnerability assessment based on real-time analysis of security metrics, auto-discovers entire database environment, and produces an interactive visual access map with drill-down details about various database access activities
- AuditGuard, which generates audit and compliance reports on a scheduled basis, and distributes reports to stakeholders
- PolicyGuard, which provides real-time enforcement and peremptory blocking of transactions that violate security policies, as well as creates policy-based alerts based on real-time events and statistical thresholds, and prevents suspicious and unauthorized access.
Guardium is privately held and headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts. It also holds R&D centers in Ramat-Gan. The company is currently led by CEO Ram Metser. Guardium’s software suite competes with Israel’s Imperva (founded by Shlomo Kramer of Checkpoint’s fame) and Sentrigo, a database security start up backed by Benchmark Israel. Both companies could by potential targets for acquisition in the near term.
This is IBM’s ninth Israeli M&A deal. It also comes in good timing for the Israeli venture capital industry, which has struggled with exits.
He is a former General Partner at Google Ventures (GV) in Europe, former head of Google for Entrepreneurs in Europe, and founding head of Campus London, Google's first startup hub. Eze writes on Israeli tech, venture capital, artificial intelligence, and founder strategy.
He is also the founder of Techbikers, a nonprofit that brings together the startup ecosystem on cycling challenges in support of Room to Read.
