Mobile World Congress, Barcelona, Spain. February 22, 2016 — Nokia plans to acquire Canadian software firm Nakina Systems for an undisclosed sum to reinforce its position in security. The companies previously had a five-year partnership where Nokia used Nakina’s software in several customer projects.
The planned acquisition is intended to help Nokia support customers facing increasing threats coming from 5G networks, Internet of Things (IoT), Big Data, Software Defined Networks (SDN) and Cloud services. As Jeremy Cowan reports, Nokia also says it wants to use the planned acquisition to help customers meet growing regulatory and legal requirements for network security.
Nakina Systems specialises in security and orchestration software for virtual and hybrid networks. The acquisition is expected to close in Q1, 2016.
Security has always been an integral part of any network solution, but now Nakina’s skills are needed to provide Nokia with vendor- and technology-agnostic capabilities that allow operators to administer, control and audit security while simplifying the way insiders access critical network assets. With the planned acquisition, Nokia also strengthens its ability to manage privileged identities and isolate network security vulnerabilities.
These capabilities are important for operators wanting to protect their networks and avert service interruptions that could damage or degrade customer experience, cause revenue loss and lead to service level agreement penalties.
Commenting on the move, Bhaskar Gorti, president of Applications and Analytics at Nokia, says: “The planned acquisition of Nakina is another example of the steps we are taking to build security and privacy into our networks from the beginning. As 70% of all security breaches originate from privileged insiders, Nakina gives us the ability to address a rapidly increasing threat for our customers.”
Mary O’Neil, CEO of Nakina Systems, adds: “Nakina bridges the security and operational gaps between the promise of cloud networks and operational realities of running high performance heterogeneous networks. With this deal, our customers will benefit from Nokia’s scale, leading expertise and investment scope for software and applications.”
