Earlier this summer, a report by Israeli business daily Calcalist indicated that Microsoft was making its largest ever Israeli acquisition, taking over cloud computing security startup Adallom. The report claimed that the tech giant was to pay some $320 million (US) for the three-year-old Adallom, adding that the company would serve as the foundation for Microsoft’s new cyber center in Israel.
Earlier today, Microsoft finally confirmed the acquisition via a blog post. Though it did not disclose how much it paid in full, TechCrunch estimates it was roughly $250 million.
Adallom specializes in providing "proven security" for programs, apps and content that exist in the cloud, a trend that Microsoft, as well as its main competitor, Apple, have been moving toward in recent years.
According to Microsoft vice-president Takeshi Numoto, the acquisition will help Microsoft in protecting “critical assets across cloud applications.”
“With more frequent and advanced cybersecurity attacks continuing to make headlines, customer concerns around security remain top of mind,” Numoto wrote in the blog post. “These concerns pose real challenges for IT, who are charged with protecting company data in this rapidly evolving mobile-first, cloud-first world.”
Adallom’s software is currently used to monitor cloud-based services such as Dropbox, Google Apps, Salesforce, and even Microsoft’s own Office 365.
News of Microsoft’s acquisition comes on the same day it announced an expansion with Dell concerning devices and services that use Windows 10.
“Our global enterprise customers have asked us to match the Surface Pro 3 and Windows 10 experience with enterprise-grade support and services, and our partnerships like this one with Dell will do just that,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said in a press release.
Over the past year, Microsoft has acquired a fair bit of Israeli technology. Last October, it purchased text analysis company Equivio for an estimated $200 million; a month later, it bought security startup Aorato for close to $200 million; and earlier this year, it acquired the rights to the pen technology used to develop its own Surface 3 from Israeli tech outfit N-trig. The Verge values that acquisition at roughly $30 million.