ICA competitors ready to accept OEM partners

MessageLabs' buyout of Fortinum ICA will cause friction among OEM partners, rivals claim

Relationship builder: MessageLabs is confident the relationship will foster good partner relations.

Competitors of image analysis vendor Fortium ICA have claimed its acquisition by MessageLabs will drive OEM partners into their arms.

Content security giant MessageLabs was an early investor in ICA, but last month moved to gain full ownership of the technology, which prevents unwanted or offensive images from entering or leaving a corporate network.

Rivals claim the deal has prompted worried phone calls from some of ICA’s OEM partners.

Crispin Pikes, chief executive of illicit image filtering vendor Image Analyser, said: “Partners are concerned the customer data they are giving to ICA will be fed back to MessageLabs, a direct competitor. We remain independent and want to sign as many OEMs as we can.”

However, Stephen Chandler, chief executive of MessageLabs, hit back claiming ICA’s OEM relationships were a key rationale behind the deal.

“One of the main attractions of the acquisition was the OEM relationships ICA had in place and we are building on them. This offers them the opportunity to partner with a larger organisation,” he said.

“It also gives OEM partners access to a broader product set than just image analysis, which we see as a catalyst to broaden the OEM relationship with the other intellectual property we have, specifically malware.”

Image Analyser has 30 OEM partners including Marshall, McAfee and IronPort, but Pikes said he hoped ICA’s takeover would prompt other vendors to switch horses. “We want to have a majority market share. There are some 200 vendors we want to supply and our goal is to work with the bulk of them.”

Kevin Smith, vice president of sales and marketing at image analysis vendor LTU Technologies, said: “There are always opportunities when something like this happens.”