Firewall Vendor Hopes to Lasso CDP

Firewall vendor SonicWall and continuous data protection (CDP) startup Lasso Logic might be the next to take part in the security-storage mating dance, according to industry sources who say SonicWall is close to acquiring Lasso Logic.

Neither company would confirm that a deal is set, but sources say the two could finish an acquisition by the end of the week. One insider says the deal is part of SonicWalls strategy of shifting from a company that sells firewalls to one that provides services on an appliance. Lasso Logic would provide the data protection for that strategy.

The marriage of storage and security has been a major theme since security software vendor Symantec’s $13.5 billion acquisition of Veritas in December. This year, we’ve seen Network Appliance acquire encryption appliance startup Decru, and EMC, NetApp, and Sun disclose major security initiatives around their storage gear. (See NetApp Buys Decru, NetApp Unveils Initiative, Sun Fills in Storage Crypto Details, and EMC Casts Wider Net.)

On Tuesday, application access software vendor Citrix Systems Inc. bought firewall vendor Teros to strengthen its application security story. (See Citrix Acquires Teros.)

Lasso CDP consists of software running on a network-based appliance containing a hard drive, which is used for continuous data protection of a range of applications. (See Lasso Joins CDP Roundup.) Lasso supports Exchange, SQL Server, and other Windows-based applications, and small business applications such as ACT and QuickBooks. With the appliance, users can go to a specific point in time to retrieve backed-up data as it then appeared.The San Francisco-based startup has raised $4 million in funding, including angel investors. With a price tag starting at $2,000, Lasso Logic tries to avoid the crowd forming around enterprise CDP and concentrate on SMBs, but faces challenges from “near-CDP” products from Microsoft and Symantec and IBM’s CDP for Files. Near-CDP lets users restore from frequent snapshots but does not continuously save data for any point in time recovery.

Sunnyvale, Calif.-based SonicWall sells a network security bundle that includes a firewall and a yearly subscription for anti-virus, anti-spyware, intrusion detection, and content filtering.

— Dave Raffo, Senior Editor, Byte and Switch

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