Symantec reels in Relicore for data centre push

Symantec has agreed to buy data centre management firm Relicore for an undisclosed amount. The deal, announced Tuesday, is expected to close in mid-February 2006.

Relicore makes data center change and configuration management products that allow firms to simplify management by providing tools to automatically discover, map, and track changes to application and server components. The technology gets around problems associated with manually collecting and maintaining asset inventories and makes troubleshooting problems more straightforward. Relicore's flagship Clarity software is also marketed as a means to help manage compliance with regulatory requirements, such as Sarbanes-Oxley.

Symantec expects to release Relicore Clarity as a stand-alone product in early April 2006, assuming that the acquisition closes as scheduled. It also plans to continue Relicore’s partnerships with third-party software vendors such as IBM Tivoli, HP OpenView, and Peregrine. Symantec hopes the offering will boost its data centre management credentials.

"The combination of Relicore’s unique, real-time configuration management capability with Symantec’s existing server management and storage management capabilities will allow IT managers to fully understand their application and server environment, and actively manage it," said Kris Hagerman, senior vice president of the Server and Storage Management Group at Symantec.

The Relicore buy follows a string of acquisitions by Symantec over recent months including its $13.5bn mega-merger with storage software giant Veritas and a string of smaller purchases. These acquisitions include TurnTide, anti-spam specialist Brightmail, SafeWeb and others. Last August Symantec made its first post-merger acquisition when it snapped up compliance specialist Sygate Technologies, rapidly following that up with the acquisition of behaviour-based security and anti-phishing developer WholeSecurity and compliance firm BindView in October. Last month Symantec acquired instant messaging security specialist IMlogic. ®