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Today’s topics include Symantec’s acquisition of LifeLock, Oracle’s buyout of DNS services company Dyn a month after it was hit by massive distributed denial of service attacks, Microsoft’s addition of Paint 3D to the Windows 10 Creators Update and the company’s latest updates to its Azure cloud platform.
Symantec announced on Nov. 21 that it is acquiring identity protection vendor LifeLock, in a deal valued at $2.3 billion. The deal is expected to close in the first calendar quarter of 2017 and will pay LifeLock shareholders $24 per share.
The goal of the acquisition is to help grow Symantec’s consumer business while providing new sources of intelligent security technology for Symantec’s enterprise business. The deal is the second major acquisition announced by Symantec in 2016, following the June acquisition of Blue Coat for $4.65 billion.
Oracle announced on Nov. 21 that it is acquiring privately-held DNS services provider Dyn. Financial terms of the deal are not being publicly disclosed, though Dyn has raised $88 million in funding, including a $50 million Series B announced on May 10.
On Oct. 21, Dyn made headlines around the world as the company was the victim of a massive Distributed Denial of Service attack that crippled many popular online services including Twitter, Reddit, Spotify, GitHub and Soundcloud, among others.
Oracle declined a request from eWEEK for any comments on the timing or value of the Dyn acquisition news. As such, it’s not clear when Oracle began negotiating with Dyn or if the DDoS attack had any material affect on the company’s value.
Microsoft’s new Surface Studio all-in-one desktop PC may have stolen the show at last month’s Windows 10 event in New York City, but the company also had some compelling offerings for even for PC users who may not be in the market for new hardware.
During the event, the Redmond, Wash. software giant announced its upcoming Windows 10 Creators Update. Expected to arrive by spring 2017, the update will include a new app, called Paint 3D, that will enable users to create and share 3D models and scenes.
Now, members of the Windows Insider early-access program can take a beta version of Paint 3D for a spin by downloading Windows 10 build 14971, announced Dona Sarkar, head of Windows Insider.
It may easier than ever to subscribe to Azure cloud services, but configuring them to run applications is hardly a set-and-forget affair.
To help customers avoid stumbling blocks and avert data security mishaps, Microsoft has released a preview of its new Azure Advisor feature it describes as, “a personalized recommendation engine” of sorts.
It helps take the guesswork out of successfully and optimally deploying applications using the company’s cloud computing services suite, claims the company. “
Azure Advisor analyzes your resource configuration and usage telemetry to detect risks and potential issues,” wrote Microsoft staffers Shankar Sivadasan and Manbeen Kohli, in a Nov. 17 blog post. “It then draws on Azure best practices to recommend solutions that will reduce your cost and improve the security, performance, and reliability of your applications.