According to CEO Nikesh Arora, the cybersecurity giant has made a lot of acquisitions in recent years — but its two latest deals may be its best ones yet.

For a company that has been aggressive on the M&A front for several years now, it’s notable that the two latest acquisition deals by Palo Alto Networks may actually be the best yet for the cybersecurity giant.
At least, that’s the case, according to company leaders, including Chairman and CEO Nikesh Arora. during seller quarterly call Speaking with analysts last week, Arora said that by the end of 2023 acquisition Secure web browser startup Talon Cyber ​​Security has reported “significant” customer adoption of the resulting Prisma Access browser.
[Related: As Palo Alto Networks Absorbs IBM QRadar, Traditional SIEM Is Fading: Analysis]
He said the capabilities have driven increased interest from customers, who have purchased 1 million licenses for the secure browser since the Talon acquisition. And with the browser included as part of the company’s SASE (Secure Access Service Edge) offering, Prisma Access, “we’ve seen a strong interest in this new integrated capability,” Arora said.
Similarly, Palo Alto Networks’ $500 million acquisition of IBM’s QRadar SaaS assets has yielded highly promising results since the deal. Closed According to the company, in September.
So far, Palo Alto Networks has seen bookings totaling more than $80 million from QRadar customers migrating to the company’s Cortex XSIAM (extended security intelligence and automation management) platform, and the pipeline for future migrations is large, Arora said. .
Arora argued that the QRadar SaaS acquisition – which is also aimed at attracting on-premises IBM QRadar customers to There will be displacement.
“We believe this deal will help us become one of the top three players in the SIEM space in the coming years,” he said during the call last week.
Overall, Palo Alto Networks has Completed There have been at least 17 acquisitions since Arora’s arrival in June 2018. These deals have been important in the seller’s efforts Detailed “Creating the Foundation for a Cybersecurity Platform-Vendor”stagingFocused on attractive consolidation on the Palo Alto Networks platform.
But internal discussion among Palo Alto Networks leadership is that the latest deals have actually been the best, Arora noted during a quarterly call last week.
“Yesterday we had a board meeting, and one of my board members and I had a debate about which deal would be the best deal for Palo Alto ever,” Arora said. “My bet is on the IBM deal. He bet on the Talon deal.
“Of course, I would like both to be equally successful,” he said.
The bottom line here is that Palo Alto Networks’ leadership believes its M&A strategy has not only established it as the player to beat in SASE – where it already is. Agreed 1 vendor by research firm Gartner – but also in the SIEM, where the company has more to prove.
Ultimately, with Arora’s bold statements about removing the current incumbents at SIEM, it is clear that the battle between Palo Alto Networks and Cisco-Splunk is about to heat up.