Symantec Corp. has announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire enterprise security firm Blue Coat Systems, Inc. for $4.65 billion in cash.

Under the deal, Blue Coat Chief Executive Officer Greg Clark will become Symantec Chief Executive Officer when the transaction in concluded and according to The Wall Street Journal Blue Coat owner Bain Capital LLC will invest $750 million of the proceeds back into the combined company in the form of debt convertible into equity.

Founded in 1996, 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 has 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 a hybrid defense, anytime, anywhere.

Blue Coat was acquired by Bain Capital in March 2015 for $2.4 billion and then went on an acquisition spree, including acquiring Perspecsys, Inc. in July 2015 followed by science-powered Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) app/cloud security firm Elastica, Inc. for $280 million in November; the technology from both companies was used to introduce a new set of cloud generation products and features to its Security Platform that was said at the time to represent a major evolution of the Secure Web Gateway.

In December 2015 reports emerged that Bain Capital was planning to float Blue Coat in 2016. Indeed, Blue Coat had announced just last week that it would do an initial public offering.

“With this transaction, we will have the scale, portfolio and resources necessary to usher in a new era of innovation designed to help protect large customers and individual consumers against insider threats and sophisticated cybercriminals,” Symantec Chairman Dan Schulman said in a statement. “Together, we will be best positioned to address the ever-evolving threat landscape, the massive changes introduced by the shift to mobile and cloud, and the challenges created by regulatory and privacy concerns.”

Strategic buy

Enterprise security continues to surge off the back of high-profile hacks, and Blue Coat has positioned itself as one of the leaders of the pack with a portfolio of integrated technologies delivering Cloud Generation Security to more than 15,000 customers worldwide; the company delivered non-GAAP revenue of $755 million in 2015 on operating margins of 22 percent.

Symantec not only obtains a new Chief Executive Officer but a company that has virtually no product overlap, making it a strategic buy in terms of being able to expand its product portfolio into a rapidly growing market.

The acquisition is expected to close in October.

Image credit: Blue Coat.