Steve Ballmer, former CEO of Microsoft, once said that the company was “as Israeli as it is American.” And even though he’s moved on to other pastures, currently the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, it seems new CEO Satya Nadella shares his affinity for Israeli enterprise.
Over the past year, Microsoft purchased cloud computing security startup Adallom for an estimated US$250 million, text analysis company Equivio for an estimated US$200 million, security startup Aorato for close to US$200 million and acquired the rights to the pen technology used to develop its own Surface 3 from Israeli tech outfit N-trig.
This week, the tech giant announced it is acquiring Israeli security startup Secure Islands, which has been around since 2006. The company is Microsoft’s third acquisition of an Israeli security firm in the last year.
While the company has yet to reveal a firm price, reports indicate that they paid roughly US$77.5 million, while the closing of the acquisition is still waiting on regulatory approval.
“This acquisition accelerates our ability to help customers secure their business data no matter where it is stored – across on-premises systems, Microsoft cloud services like Azure and Office 365, third-party services, and any Windows, iOS or Android device,” wrote
“These new capabilities, combined with the data classification in Windows and Office 365, will provide our customers with the industry’s most comprehensive data protection solution.”
Aki Eldar, Secure Islands’ CEO, said in a brief statement that, “By joining Microsoft, we will be able to extend and expand our vision.”
Up to date, Secure Islands has raised approximately US$11.1 million. The company provides “powerful data classification, protection and loss prevention techniques” for any type of file, allowing customers to utilize data protection to even more applications.