HP stated its planned $1.5 billion buyout of ArcSight unveiled on Monday is aimed to propel HP into the heart of enterprise security. a move that both stormed and impressed industry spectators. ArcSight, which lately put itself up for sale, is a vender in the security and information event management (SIEM) area, with its Enterprise Threat and Risk Management Platform utilized by corporate enterprises and government to monitor external-originating threats and general employee activities for compliance as well as logging of events.

Hottest tech M&A deals of 2010 "It's a great asset, a market-leading company," stated, an analyst with Enterprise Strategy Group. He mentions ArcSight's chief rivals nowadays admit RSA with its enVision product, as well as vendors Q1 Labs, LogLogic and LogRhythm. Oltsik admits he was a bit stormed to see HP going out to snag ArcSight since HP has not developed a large security product portfolio and has at times deprived products, such as its identity management suite, which it sold to Novell. "They haven't really jumped in with both feet," he says. But he adds that ArcSight's security monitoring acts appear to be a good fit with HP OpenView and Opsware.