A few issues back we talked about McAfee's acquisition strategy — since March, 2007 McAfee has spent over a billion dollars on seven acquisitions which completely reshaped McAfee's security offerings and put more McAfee branded security products out into the channel. In most cases, McAfee bought companies with proven revenue generating products. Trend Micro, on the other hand, has a different acquisition strategy. Trend's strategy is to buy early stage companies which means taking more time and embedding the acquired technology as a feature in its other products. Trend has made five key acquisitions over a four year period and buying early stage companies in a strategic market category. Interestingly, these acquisitions are similar in category (Encryption, DLP, Reputation) to McAfee's acquisitions but the companies that Trend acquired had not yet generated significant revenues. Since the acquired companies were all privately held and the acquisition price wasn't "material" Trend didn't report the prices it paid. But you can probably guess that the total amount spent was comparatively well under the billion McAfee spent.
Recent Trend Micro Acquisitions
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