To fulfill its vision of expansion via acquisitions, mobile security management provider AirWatch (News - Alert) has raised another $25 million, led by Accel with participation from Insight Venture Partners. According to AirWatch, this new round takes its Series A funding to a total of $225 million.
AirWatch’s CEO John Marshall (News - Alert) told TechCrunch that this latest injection will be used to help the startup build out its business, add more services, and quite possibly make some acquisitions along the way.
Although the CEO declined to give specifics, he indicated that they would be well thought out investments to expand product lines as well as its customer base. “I think we will look very carefully at adjacent technology or tuck-in acquisitions,” Marshall said in a statement. “I would not want to answer who they are. The three companies that I am looking at right now are all doing different things, and I don’t want to tip off our competitors.”
Though the larger part of AirWatch’s business is still in the enterprise mobility management space including devices as well as apps, the company foresees a high a level of growth in security. Its CEO believes that the growth will come from securing the content in a digital locker.
“We see a lot of growth in extending that out within our customer base. I can’t emphasize how important this is in our strategy,” he added. As a result, it will extend AirWatch’s reach into desktop services, going beyond mobile devices and platforms.
In fact, with the BOYD trend in vogue, security for mobile devices, applications and content is now becoming a paramount concern in a mobility management strategy. Whether users have a corporate-owned or employee-owned device, they are accessing corporate data, e-mail and more from their mobile devices. “These user actions require you to implement a mobile strategy with strong security policies,” commented TechCrunch Reporter Ingrid Lunden.
Hence, the mobile security management expert is actively working to bring on board additional security capabilities to its suite via strategic acquisitions.
Edited by Jamie Epstein