Palo Alto takes a big $500M bite out of IBM QRadar

Palo Alto Networks has completed its purchase of IBM's QRadar SaaS offering, spending $500 million to buy up the service's customers and hopefully shift them into its own Cortex platform.

Neither company is commenting beyond their individual announcements. To us this looks like a straight customer grab, with IBM promising a "seamless and cost-free migration" from QRadar SaaS to PAN's Cortex system. Over 1,000 Big Blue consultants have been trained on that Palo Alto system and costs shouldn't rise for eligible customers, it is claimed.

"Working with Palo Alto Networks will be a strategic advantage for IBM as our two companies partner on advanced threat protection, response, and security operations using Cortex XSIAM and watsonx, backed by IBM Consulting," IBM CEO Arvind Krishna said in a canned statement.

"At the same time, IBM will continue innovating to help secure organizations' hybrid cloud environments and AI initiatives, focusing our investments on data security and identity and access management technologies."

According to PAN's buzzword-bingo-heavy release, the Cortex platform is said to provide security information and event management (SIEM), security orchestration, automation and response (SOAR), attack surface management (ASM) and the all-important extended detection and response (XDR), the current phrase for using AI to potentially fix issues faster than admins.

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"We are on a mission to help organizations transform their security operations and harness the potential of Precision AI-powered platforms to better protect their businesses," claimed PAN CEO Nikesh Arora.

"Our partnership with IBM reinforces our commitment to innovation and our conviction in the tremendous benefit of QRadar customers adopting Cortex XSIAM for a robust, data-driven security platform that offers transformative efficiency and effectiveness in defending against evolving cyber threats."

One practical result of this is that IBM is shifting to PAN. Around a quarter of a million IBM staff will be using Palo Alto's Prisma SASE 3.0 security software.

Big Blue takes a payoff to preserve shareholder value, and it's all about PAN's Cortex XSIAM AI platform from now on. The security giant is betting on XSIAM to grab a significant share of the security management market, and buying IBM's business is a logical move. ®