Though the recently announced marriage between EMC and RSA resembles last year's merger between Symantec and Veritas, analysts say that the new merger is targeted to integrate security into information lifecycle management (ILM).
“On the macro there are some similarities, but on a micro level these are two different animals,” said Jon Oltsik, senior analyst for the Enterprise Strategy Group.
He and other analysts agree that the EMC’s decision to pick up RSA was designed to better integrate security into its storage management products, while the Symantec acquisition of Veritas was more about expanding the Symantec portfolio.
“I think the EMC-RSA deal is significantly different than Symantec and Veritas,” said Charles King, analyst with Pund-IT. “While Symantec does offer business security products, what they were really looking for was to expand their presence in different markets and Veritas was a great deal for them to do that.”
Both King and Oltsik said that while Symantec is involved in business security, its biggest strengths have been in desktop security management — something that is not as closely entwined with ILM. Whereas RSA is a huge player in encryption and key management, as well as authentication, both big targets for EMC research and development for a long time.
"EMC’s already talking about the strategic fit and where security gets baked into ILM,” Oltsik said. “Whereas Veritas and Symantec were talking about broad industry trends. I agreed with them then, but I think it’s easier to point to specific things that you’ll do than to just say that the industry is changing.”
