Bain Capital acquires security and networking solutions provider Blue Coat for $2.4 billion
Security and networking solutions provider Blue Coat Systems Inc., has been acquired by Bain Capital in a deal reported to be $2.4 billion including debt.
Based in Sunnyvale, CA, Blue Coat offers a range of products across security, WAN optimization, personal security and service provider caching. The company claims that its integrated portfolio of products have become the de facto standard for many of the Fortune Global 2000, and that it has built the largest global cloud security infrastructure, which integrates with its on-premise solutions to offer hybrid defense, anytime, anywhere.
The company said that it had experienced strong market share and revenue growth in its major product lines and currently counts 80 percent of the Fortune 500 as customers.
“Blue Coat has differentiated products for protecting enterprises from even the most sophisticated threats, and we are proud to be a foundational part of the security architecture for the world’s largest enterprises” Blue Coat’s CEO Gregory S. Clark Blue Coat said in a statement. “The world’s most trusted brands use Blue Coat, and the acquisition by Bain Capital sets us on the trajectory to further grow our portfolio, better serve our customers and help us prepare to return to the public markets.”
A pre-dotcom boom networking firm, Blue Coat went public at the height off the bubble, but unlike many firms from around that period managed to stay afloat during the tech depression days of the first half of the 2000’s. In 2012 it went private when it was acquired by Thoma Bravo for $1.3 billion.
Although not officially confirmed, The Wall Street Journal noted in its report that the acquisition may be an investment in taking Blue Coat public again, not an unsurprising suggestion given that Bain Capital isn’t known for holding full equity in companies over longer periods of time.
photo credit: big file server via photopin (license)
A message from John Furrier, co-founder of SiliconANGLE:
Your vote of support is important to us and it helps us keep the content FREE.
One click below supports our mission to provide free, deep, and relevant content.
Join our community on YouTube
Join the community that includes more than 15,000 #CubeAlumni experts, including Amazon.com CEO Andy Jassy, Dell Technologies founder and CEO Michael Dell, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, and many more luminaries and experts.
THANK YOU