By Andy McCue, 4 July 2003 15:58
NEWS Hewlett Packard is to buy the SelectAccess authentication software business from security firm Baltimore Technologies for £8.3m. The deal is subject to approval by Baltimore's shareholders and is expected to be finalised by the end of October this year. Public key infrastructure (PKI) vendor Baltimore has been battling to cut its losses and put the whole business up for sale in May. The SelectAccess single sign-on business contributed around just £700,000 in revenue last year to total company sales of £26.5m but accounted for £2.1m of losses. It employs 30 staff in Canada who will move to HP. A spokesman for Baltimore told silicon.com the deal represented a "great price" considering its losses and that the cash will make Baltimore a more financially attractive acquisition. "We are still in negotiations with several other parties for other bits of the business or the whole business," he said. Bijan Khezri, CEO of Baltimore, said HP is in a good position to develop the technology's potential. He said in a statement: "It will reinforce HP's ability to offer superior infrastructure security for the benefit of customers and employees. We remain committed to achieving the best possible outcome for all our stakeholders regarding the remaining parts of our business."
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