Enterprise Cloud FEATURED ARTICLE

Service desk management giant ServiceNow (News - Alert) is acquiring BrightPoint Security in an all-cash deal. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

San Mateo, Calif.-based BrightPoint Security delivers predictive insight and prescriptive responses to protect businesses from cyber threats.

The deal, which is expected to close this month, is a move by ServiceNow to expand beyond its core IT management tools and play more in the areas of customer service, human resource services, and security. In its recent financial results announcement, the company expressed the goal to generate $4 billion in revenue by 2020 via this expansion strategy. ServiceNow expects its revenues for this year to fall between $1.35 billion and $1.38 billion.

ServiceNow already provides some security solutions. In fact, it launched its Security Operations cloud application in February. It expects to add BrightPoint technology to a future release of this offering to help firms do secure and controlled information sharing.

“This acquisition strengthens ServiceNow’s commitment to closing the gap between IT operations and security,” said Sean Convery, vice president and general manager of security at ServiceNow. “BrightPoint will further differentiate the connected experience that ServiceNow users have across security processes and teams.”

This is just ServiceNow’s latest acquisition. The company this spring announced plans to buy ITapp, which offers a cloud platform management solution. And in November of 2014 it launched ServiceNow Express, a cloud-based IT service management solution.

As noted above, ServiceNow is a leader in the worldwide service desk management software space. The other leader in BMC. More than a third of the Global 2000 leverage ServiceNow solutions, and the company caters to mid sized firms in such verticals as banking and financial services as well.

In an interview with me in November, Dave Stephens (News - Alert), vice president and general manager of service management at ServiceNow, said that there are three main challenges IT faces today in meeting both the requirements of the business at large and the employees in particular: delivering a great experience, offering more transparency so the businesses for which they work can better understand the value of various IT functions, and speed.