McAfee on Thursday added a shiny new piece to its budding SaaS portfolio by acquiring MX Logic, a privately owned Englewood, Colo.-based security vendor.
The deal is expected to close in the third quarter and will consist of about $140 million in cash, but MX Logic could get an additional $30 million if it reaches certain performance targets.
MX Logic is known as a channel-friendly company, but at least one solution provider partner doesn't like how McAfee has handled the channel integration of previous acquisitions and is worried that this one will follow the same course.
One West Coast solution provider who requested anonymity said Secure Computing's channel support dwindled quickly after McAfee acquired the company last year. He's hoping that the MX Logic deal won't be a repeat.
"Integration is hard [after an acquisition], but McAfee should give more thought to figuring out who will continue to support resellers," said the source. "We're selling the very products that create the cash flow which makes these acquisitions appealing in the first place."
McAfee, which has been steadily building out its SaaS capabilities, sees MX Logic fitting well within its global threat intelligence and cloud-based security services, including the five million users McAfee says are currently subscribed to its Total Protection Service for endpoints.
MX Logic has been setting its sights on global markets and in June unveiled a new multitenant managed security platform, MX SecureNet, which includes e-mail, Web, message archiving and disaster recovery. The company says the SecureNet platform makes it easy for partners new to the managed services space to get up to speed by removing the burdens of a multitenant environment and management of multiple point security services and vendors.
