As we go through the process of updating Burton Group’s IdM landscape coverage, it’s fun to look back at some of the predictions made in the Enterprise Identity Management Market 2005: Battle of the Brands report. There is no crystal ball in the Midvale office and no one on the team committed any SEC violations, that I’m aware of – but many of the predictions were on target. Here are a few predictions from the 2005 report and the actual results
Prediction:
“Oracle and HP may decide to round out their portfolios through acquisition. BMC acquired Calendra already this year, and Oracle could pick up OctetString.”
Outcome:
Oracle stepped up in a big way by acquiring OctetString and Thor Technologies, while HP snaps up federation specialist Trustgenix
Prediction:
“Companies looking for provisioning technologies may investigate Thor, Abridean, M-Tech, and Courion”
Outcome:
Two out of four on this one. See previous note on Thor - and Abridean was acquired by nCipher
Prediction:
“Companies with strong authentication could expand into enterprise single sign-on and therefore justify an acquisition. Vasco, Gemplus, and Axalto are currently partnering for this functionality.”
Outcome:
Gemplus and Axalto merge to form Gemalto – does that count? In another deal, ActiveCard and Protocom join forces and rename the combined company ActiveIdentity
Prediction:
“On a larger scale, specialty brands such as Fischer International and RSA Security would make interesting acquisition targets for anchor brands”
Outcome:
The biggest deal of the year so far is EMC’s acquisition of RSA Security for $1.2 billion (more comments on this in a future post)
Prediction:
“In addition, vendors such as Cisco, SAP, and Symantec could enter the market through acquisition”
Outcome:
Well, we can’t get everything right (Symantec’s acquisition of BindView doesn’t really count) – maybe it won’t happen until next year!
Summary: You shouldn’t necessarily adjust your tech stock portfolios based on Burton Group research reports, but stay tuned for the next edition of the IdM market landscape report this fall.
[posted by Gerry Gebel]
