Symantec just announced that it is acquiring Sygate. No terms were released. Sygate has 140 employees and 350 customers (no revenue numbers disclosed) so I am setting $200 million as a benchmark for whether the deal was a good one for the "market" or not. I have $200m pegged as less than 10x Sygate’s revenue and maybe 6-8x total VC funding (Sygate had at least $35m VC funding, including a $5m investment from Symantec). 

I am always curious about Symantec and/or McAfee buying endpoint security companies, simply because they’ve been on the endpoint for years and have been telling us that they provide complete protection. This is an easier case, however, because Sygate has 1) stronger NAC capability, which 2) competes nicely with Cisco (Symantec is also going toe-to-toe w/ Cisco/Protego with their SEM appliances), and 3) Sygate’s 350 customers doesn’t hurt.

Symantec, however, doesn’t have a strong record in turning acquisitions into revenue streams (although I guess ALL of their revenue streams were acquisitions at one point). The question in my mind is, how well will this stuff integrate with its others on the endpoint? Remember, Symantec just bought Platform Logic, which also claims to be HIPS.