Deal: EMC/RSA - It's official

I checked the newswires, but I must have missed it. The deal is done and announced. $2.1 Billion, which is a HUGE number. Congrats to Art and the rest of the RSA team and the Cyota folks - who were one of the big engines for RSA's comeback.

Read the release here. Looks like Art is going to stay around and continue to run the operation. Also interesting is that the group will be called "EMC's Information Security Division," so the RSA brand presumably is dead - though they'd be fools to mess with the conference.

One of the other things I didn't consider is the proximity angle. Both EMC and RSA are Boston-based, which will make the integration of RSA into the fold much easier. Not that EMC hasn't done big West Coast deals (VMware and Documentum), but it's always a factor.

Symantec is the big loser here for a change. As I was writing the last post, the logic of Symantec/RSA made more and more sense to me. But alas, now the Big Yellow has another foil. It'll be interesting to see the Symantec spin of this deal over the next few days.