Oracle Buys Security Startup Zenedge To Boost Cloud Platform

Oracle has capped off a week of aggressive cloud announcements with the news it plans to buy Zenedge, a four-year-old startup whose technology will add to Oracle’s security offerings.

The acquisition, the details of which weren’t disclosed, is part of Oracle’s efforts to catch up to cloud infrastructure leaders including Amazon, Microsoft and Google.

Zenedge, founded in 2014, gives Oracle Web Application Firewall (WAF) and denial-of-service protection technology that can shield cloud, on-premises or hybrid enterprise environments.

It operates a security operations monitoring centre for customers and currently guards 800,000 websites and networks worldwide. Zenedge has raised $13.7 million (£9.7m) to date.

Security expansion

Oracle said Zenedge customers could continue to use their current contacts at the company and that it plans to invest in building out the startup’s infrastructure services.

“We expect this will include more functionality and capabilities at a quicker pace,” Oracle said in a document detailing its plans.

Industry analysts said the deal, along with moves earlier last week to rapidly build out its range of data centres and to expand automation, are intended to set it apart from larger competitors.

“Oracle hopes to move closer to being able to directly offer comprehensive security protections to applications that are hosted in (Oracle Cloud Infrastructure),” said 451 Research in a note on the deal.

Last week Oracle said it would build 12 data centres over the next two years in addition to the four it currently operates.

Cloud drive

The new facilities are to be set up in Asia, Europe and North America – more specifically China, India, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Singapore and South Korea in Asia and Amsterdam and Switzerland in Europe, with a further two in Canada and two in the US for military workloads.

At its CloudWorld event in New York, Oracle also said it would expand the use of automation on its Platform as a Service, moving it beyond databases to a range of areas including security.

Oracle said it would use its Cloud Platform Autonomous Services to make all services on the platform self-driving, self-securing and self-repairing, using artificial intelligence to automate functions such as tuning, patching, backups and upgrades.

Aside from security, Oracle said it would apply the autonomous technology to application development, app and data integration and analytics, as well as mobile services and automated bots.

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