RedHat announced today that it is acquiring StackRox, a container security startup . The companies did not share the purchase price.
RedHat, perhaps best known for its enterprise Linux products, has moved to the cloud in recent years. IBM bought the company in 2018 for a whopping $ 34 billion and leveraged that acquisition as part of the move to a hybrid cloud strategy under the leadership of CEO Arvind Krishna.
The acquisition fits perfectly with RedHat OpenShift, its container platform, but the company says it will continue to support StackRox use on other platforms including AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform. This approach is consistent with that of IBM strategy to support hybrid and multicloud environments.
In fact, Red Hat President and CEO Paul Cormier sees the two companies working well together. "Red Hat adds StackRox's native Kubernetes capabilities to OpenShift's layered security approach, furthering our mission to bring open product-ready innovation to all organizations through open hybrid cloud through IT footprints," he said. stated in a statement.
CEO Kamal Shah, writing in a blog post for the company announcing the acquisition, explained that the company made a bet a couple of years ago on Kubernetes and it paid off. "More than two and a half years ago, we decided to focus exclusively on Kubernetes and transformed the entire product to be native to Kubernetes. Although this seems obvious today; it wasn't like that then. Fast forward to 2020 and Kubernetes has emerged as the de facto operating system for cloud native applications and hybrid cloud environments, "wrote Shah.
Shah sees purchasing as a way to expand the company and road map more quickly by using the resources of Red Hat (and IBM), a typical topic for CEOs of small acquired companies. But the trick is always to find a way to stay relevant within such a large organization.
The acquisition of StackRox is part of a consolidation that we have seen in the Kubernetes space in general and in the security space more specifically. This includes Palo Alto Networks acquiring competitor TwistLock for $ 410 million in 2019. Another competitor, Aqua Security, which raised $ 130 million, remains independent.
StackRox was founded in 2014 and raised over $ 65 million, according to data from Crunchbase. Investors included Menlo Ventures, Redpoint and Sequoia Capital. The deal is expected to close this quarter subject to normal regulatory scrutiny.
