LANDesk to Acquire AppSense, Extend Endpoint Management Offerings

**Editor’s Note: Please click here for a recap of the biggest channel-impacting mergers in Jan.-Feb. 2015.**

LANDesk has announced an agreement to acquire AppSense, a provider of secure user environment-management services.

This acquisition, LANDesk’s seventh in five years, advances its unified endpoint management by extending capabilities to include both physical and virtual devices, and eliminating the need for separate tools and processes, according to the company. AppSense also brings advanced endpoint protection capabilities to LANDesk’s portfolio.

LANDesk’s software provides systems management, security management, service management, asset management and process-management services to organizations. Financial details regarding the acquisition were not disclosed.

Jed Ayres, AppSense’s senior vice president of marketing, tells Channel Partners the retention and expansion of the relationships with AppSense partners are “critical to the integration of this deal.” The acquisition should be final in 30 days.

“Over time, existing LANDesk partners will get access to the AppSense portfolio,” he said. “For the near term no changes will be made to the partner programs, and the businesses and programs will be run separately.”

The acquisition will create a host of new opportunities for employees, partners and customers of both AppSense and LANDesk, Ayres said. There is limited overlap in offerings, customers and partners, he said.{ad}

“With the addition of AppSense user virtualization solutions,” he said, “IT teams will be able to manage both physical and virtual devices, and deliver an enhanced user experience and improved endpoint security across physical, virtual and cloud desktops. AppSense also brings advanced endpoint protection capabilities to the LANDesk portfolio with solutions around application control and privilege management. Together, LANDesk and AppSense offerings combine to support strategies that will allow organizations to mitigate up to 85 percent of all threats.”

In a January interview with Channel Partners, Jon Rolls, AppSense’s vice president of product management, talked about his company’s plans to strike it big this year in two key areas: endpoint security and Windows 10 migration.

“The last six months have been fantastic; we closed the largest deals in our history and we’ve seen more and more …

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… of our business going through our partner network than ever before,” he said. “We have about 3,500 customers now, including government, finance, health care and education. We have everything from the small wetsuit manufacturer up to ministry of defense.”

The acquisition is a “great strategic fit” for LANDesk, said Steve Daly, that company’s CEO.

“It will reinforce LANDesk’s position as the leader in unified endpoint management and will strengthen our expertise in virtualization,” he said. “It will also expand our operational security capabilities. We are excited about the growth opportunities and look forward to delivering even more comprehensive endpoint management and security solutions to our customers.”

When the acquisition is final, LANDesk will have more than 1,200 employees in 18 countries with support in 10 languages, Ayres said. It is expected the AppSense product will be localized into other languages through this acquisition as well. Currently it is only delivered in English.