CA Acquires Netegrity

The acquisition will allow Islandia, N.Y.-based CA to integrate Netegrity's technology into its own eTrust Identity and Access Management group, CA executives said.

Security is the third prong of CA's overarching vision for itself as a technology provider, a vision whose other prongs include storage management and IT operations management, according to CA interim CEO Ken Cron. Over the course of the last several months, CA executives have repeatedly said that acquisitions would be a major part of CA realizing that vision.

The Netegrity purchase will give CA's product portfolio added strength in the areas of user identity management, federated identity management, and information security. Netegrity's SiteMinder, TransactionMinder and IdentityMinder products will give CA added tools to allow customers to control and audit user access to information, secure communication between business partners and secure the access to multiple Web-based applications and services.

In buying Netegrity, "CA significantly strengthens its leading position in identity and access management [IAM]. Security continues to be critically important to CA, and we will ensure that we offer customers the broadest and deepest IAM suite in the industry," Cron said in a statement.

The deal is an all cash merger valued at approximately $430 million and is expected to be completed in the next 90 days. CA executives said the company plans to retain a majority of Netegrity's 400 or so employees.