Palo Alto Networks CEO: IBM QRadar deal 'cements our place' in SIEM market

The agreement to acquire IBM’s QRadar SaaS assets also opens the door for Palo Alto Networks to pursue the ‘much larger prize’ of migrating on-premises QRadar customers to XSIAM, CEO Nikesh Arora said Monday.

Palo Alto Networks' agreement to acquire IBM's QRadar SaaS assets is poised to rapidly elevate the cybersecurity vendor's position in the crucial SIEM market, according to CEO Nikesh Arora (pictured).

The agreement is intended to drive migration of QRadar SaaS customers onto Palo Alto Networks' Cortex XSIAM (extended security intelligence and automation management) platform. XSIAM is the company's AI-powered platform that competes with SIEM (security information and event management) tools used by security analysts.

Palo Alto Networks will pay approximately $500m to IBM as part of the deal, which was announced last week and is expected to close by the end of September.

During the vendor's quarterly call with analysts Monday, Arora said the deal has numerous benefits for Palo Alto Networks as it looks to become a bigger player in the fast-growing market for tools used by security operations centre (SOC) teams.

The planned acquisition "hopefully cements our place in the SIEM/SOC category at a pace that nobody would have anticipated," Arora said during the call.

The companies said last week that they will "facilitate the migration" of QRadar SaaS customers to Palo Alto Networks' XSIAM platform once the acquisition closes. On-premises QRadar customers will continue to receive updates and support, the companies said.

During the quarterly call Monday, Arora said the deal with IBM should help to accelerate the company's "platformisation" push, which seeks to make it easier for customers to consolidate on the vendor's broad security platform.

"Part of platformisation is [being] able to transition customers off their existing contracts," Arora said. "Now the good news [with the IBM deal] is, we can transition these customers irrespective of the term when they expire."

For instance, rather than waiting several years to migrate a QRadar SaaS customer to XSIAM, "I can just walk up to them and say, ‘Listen, you're already my customer now, because I've acquired the contract,'" he said. "‘Why don't you come [and we'll] work on transitioning to XSIAM?'"

Additionally, the deal opens the door for Palo Alto Networks to pursue the migration of on-premises QRadar customers to XSIAM, as well, according to Arora. Given the sizable base of customers using QRadar on-prem, that opportunity "is a much larger prize," he said.

Arora also noted that Palo Alto Networks has not previously been ranked in Gartner's influential Magic Quadrant for SIEM, while IBM has been ranked in the "leaders" quadrant.

Overall, "I think it's an amazing deal for us," he said. "I'm just delighted that IBM agreed to do this deal with us."