Wednesday, 14 November 2007

Sun Acquires Vaau, Strengthens Identity Management Portfolio

Sun Microsystems and Vaau announced Tuesday that they have entered into a definitive agreement pursuant to which Sun will acquire Vaau, a premier provider of Enterprise Role Management (ERM) and identity compliance solutions.

As regulatory requirements continue to tighten, enterprises must find new ways to reduce auditing costs. By leveraging ERM, organizations can reduce these costs by discovering, defining, and managing user access with a common vocabulary that links business and IT.

Sun believes that Vaau's RBACx solution combined with the provisioning and identity auditing capabilities of Sun's identity management portfolio powered by the Solaris 10 Operating System will enable organizations to streamline the provisioning process and significantly reduce the cost of auditing.

"This announcement further underscores Sun's leadership in the high growth identity audit and compliance categories, adding both a market-leading solution and proven implementation services to our portfolio," said Jim McHugh, vice president of Marketing, Software Infrastructure, Sun Microsystems.

"As a leader in enterprise role management and identity certification, Vaau provides an integrated set of capabilities to automate and enforce internal security controls that will further enhance Sun's ability to provide comprehensive solutions to our customers across the full spectrum of governance, risk and compliance."

Recognized as a global leader in identity management, Sun manages billions of user identities worldwide for the world's largest companies spanning a variety of industries.

The definitive agreement to acquire Vaau is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to be completed during Sun's fiscal third quarter 2008, which begins on December 31, 2007.

According to a statement found on its Website, Sun said the terms of the deal were not disclosed as the transaction is immaterial to Sun's earnings per share.