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Themarker.com, an Israeli business news website, reported IBM will pay $225 million in the acquisition, equal to 10 times the amount of venture capital invested in the Waltham-based security software startup. In a conference call today, IBM and Guardium executives declined to discuss terms of the deal.
Founded in 2002, Guardium makes security and compliance software for relational databases. IBM has not yet decided on the fate of the Guardium brand, said a spokeswoman. However, IBM plans to keep, and add to, Guardium’s approximately 150 employees, two-thirds of which are based in Waltham, said Arvind Krishna, general manager, IBM Information Management.
“The people at Guardium were the critical part of our decision,” Krishna said.
Guardium CEO and founder Ram Metser was previously co-founder of Waltham-based Telekol Corp., which was purchased by Nokia in 1999 for more than $56 million.
Metser said he has no plans to embark on another startup venture, but intends to stay on at IBM, helping to integrate Guardium with IBM’s information management portfolio of products. “We really do believe in the longer-term vision that exists here for the combination of Guardium’s technology with IBM,” he said.
Guardium’s investors include IBM competitor Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO) , which joined a $6.3 million fourth funding round in 2006 that brought the company’s venture investment to at least $21 million.
Krishna said it’s not unusual for the two companies’ strategic investments to overlap. “In this case I believe [Cisco] made a very good investment,” he said.
Guardium’s institutional backers include Boston-based Ascent Venture Partners, which led a $5.5 million third funding round in 2005, and three Israeli venture firms that syndicated on the startup’s first institutional round in 2003 – Cedar Fund, which maintains offices in Waltham, StageOne Ventures and Veritas Venture Partners.
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