Xceedium: CA Technologies extends id management with Xceedium

CA Technologies is to make another acquisition hot the heels of the trio of the May/June period (see here). The target is Xceedium, a privately held provider of privileged identify management solutions optimised for on premise, cloud and hybrid environments. Terms were not disclosed.With its ability to mitigate risk by controlling and managing the credentials and activities of privileged users (e.g. those with unfettered access to high value systems, such as system administrators or other highly privileged users), Xceedium will complement CA's existing privileged identify management approach and products, making it a sensible and low risk buy in the security growth market. Xceedium can be deployed as a physical or virtual appliance or Amazon machine image.CA has suffered from the legacy of its heavily acquisition-grown over-large portfolio. The impact of widespread changes to its strategy and the business mix are evident but the benefits are slow to come through. Q116 results to (June 30 2015) saw a 9% yoy decline in revenue to £977m, while income from continuing operations was down 2% to $207m. FX played its part but so did a fall in overall revenue and new sales. However, although Enterprise revenue fell 8%, it did pull in some new business, with management pointing to a "positive trend over the past three quarters in enterprise solutions new sales growth rates. This was achieved mainly from our Named and Growth accounts, which is proof that our strategy is beginning to show impact." The operating margin improved from 29% to 31%, primarily due to cost management. The Xceedium acquisition, (expected to close this quarter), is unlikely to move the revenue and profit needles by itself but will be a useful addition to CA Technologies' identify management portfolio. Xceedium competitors include Centrify, NetIQ, Okta and CyberArk.