The past few weeks have been quite eventful in the M&A space for custom integration, and that trend continues as NETGEAR announced the acquisition of Exium, a cybersecurity company catering directly to managed service providers.
NETGEAR GM Explains Exium Acquisition Further
“Exium was built from the ground up as a cybersecurity solution to help protect small and medium enterprises that lack a comprehensive solution for combatting cybersecurity threats,” said Exium CEO Farooq Khan.
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According to NETGEAR, the acquisition was conducted as part of the company’s “continued investment in cloud-based solutions for advanced business connectivity.” The company also cited AI’s impact on cybersecurity as another impetus for the acquisition.
“AI has changed the threat landscape for small and medium enterprises as well as larger businesses, but the solutions for SMEs are often too difficult to implement or need to be cobbled onto the network and managed separately,” said Pramod Badjate, President and GM of NETGEAR for Business.
Exium’s SASE to Be Integrated into NETGEAR Core Offering
NETGEAR has stated that the Exium acquisition will help to add an integrated Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) platform to NETGEAR’s existing network offering.
According to Cloudflare, an SASE is an architectural model that unifies network connectivity with network security functions onto a single platform situated on the cloud edge as opposed to traditional storage in a corporate data center. In simpler terms, an “SASE offers organizations a streamlined way to manage previously disjointed infrastructure — networking and access control — together.”
Elaborating further, NETGEAR states that Exium’s SASE solution was built with MSPs in mind to help onboard and serve their small and medium enterprise customers rapidly.
“By offering the Exium SASE solution with the goal of integrating it into our Insight cloud management platform, we’ll be able to bring our customers a seamless, single-pane-of-glass solution that is easily deployed and managed by small IT teams or MSPs,” Badjate said.
“We share a similar vision with NETGEAR and are excited to be joining the team to build a fully integrated network and security solution specially tailored to serve the needs of these customers,” Khan stated.
According to Gartner, the SASE market is expected to grow at a 29% CAGR, reaching over $25 billion by 2027 as organizations increasingly prioritize cloud-based networking and security solutions.
Following the acquisition, Khan will continue to lead the Exium solution, joining the NETGEAR for Business leadership team. The closing of the transaction is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to occur by the end of Q2 2025.
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