Former Barracuda Networks CEO Acquires Cloud Access Control Company For $50M

Barracuda Networks Founder and former CEO Dean Drako said Thursday that he has acquired cloud access control company Brivo for $50 million to integrate with his cloud-based video surveillance firm Eagle Eye Networks.

The move will allow Eagle Eye Networks to provide what executives said is the first 100 percent cloud-based integrated offering for access control and video surveillance from a single vendor. The combined companies will solve a challenge faced by video surveillance offerings by correlating the video with activity measured at physical entrances, Brivo President and CEO Steve Van Till said.

"The benefits are exponential in this case," Van Till said.

[Related: Security Vendor Kaspersky Lab Is Latest Cyberattack Target]

After founding Barracuda in 2003 and growing it to more than $250 million in revenue, Drako left the company in 2012 to found Eagle Eye Networks. Last year, the company landed significant investments from some of the top names in tech, including a multimillion dollar investment by Michael Dell and his family, Austin Ventures and notable security industry luminary Enrique Salem, former CEO of Symantec and current board member at FireEye.

Having that high caliber of backing from Drako and other industry executives will be significant going forward, Van Till said. "The brand power of this acquisition is tremendous," he said. "Dan's obviously been very successful at creating and scaling companies. I think this is at the point of the hockey stick in the security industry when cloud is about to take off ... That is something that will be tremendously valued as we get into the next phase of our business."

As he has with other companies, Drako said he will follow what he calls his "formula for successful companies," which includes making sure the product solves a problem, conserving cash, making customers happy, measuring results and adapting quickly, and building the company for success.

"Steve and I will be working to fine-tune the Brivo machine and take it to success so we can ride this cloud tidal wave and build this company to be something really big in this industry," Drako said.

The integration between the two companies has already started, as the two announced a product integration in April between Brivo OnAir and the Eagle Eye Security Camera VMS. With the acquisition, Brivo will begin selling a fully integrated solution in July. The combined solution will be "bigger and better" than each independently, Van Till said, with a broader feature set and a much richer web API integration.

For partners, that cloud-based integration means being able to easily jump on an opportunity to package physical security offerings with their information security portfolio, the executives agreed. Van Till said he is starting to see "a lot of crossover" between the IT channel and the physical security channel, starting with video surveillance, as IT looks to extend beyond the core technologies.

Drako agreed, saying, "I think there's a general trend under way that the IT folks are taking over more and more of the security functionality because it's becoming more IT-centric, just in the same way that when the phone systems became IP phones, the IT department took over," Drako said. "IT resellers, and the IT channel and IT people in the organization taking [physical security] over, are more involved and are taking ownership of it a lot more."

PUBLISHED JUNE 11, 2015