3 ms·
Sourcefire's flagship product is Snort which is an excellent Open Source Intrusion Detection System. Their business model is to offer management tools, rules an
by casca 13y ago
Sourcefire's flagship product is Snort which is an excellent Open Source Intrusion Detection System. Their business model is to offer management tools, rules and support on Snort for enterprises.
Their 2012 earnings were $223.1m which was a 35% increase over 2011. With cash and near-cash of around $200m, this is a purchase price of around 10x annual revenue.
- quesera 13y agoThat's an impressive business, I didn't realize they were doing so well. Cisco obviously has a long history of buying network appliance (no caps) companies, including those that sell competing products. Sometimes the product lines are incorporated, sometimes they're run in parallel, and sometimes they're squashed (after Cisco's internal EOL promissory schedule, hopefully). What Cisco does not do often is buy companies with open source products. I think it's clear that Cisco needs to make big changes to their organization. I wonder if this signals that they are heading toward an IBM-style services model, or an Oracle-style scorched earth model...