In 2008 Tripwire made itself known in the virtualization space with the release of two free tools, Tripwire’s ConfigCheck and OpsCheck. By the time 2009 came around, Tripwire was getting itself fully established in the virtual space for the release of its new product, Tripwire’s vWire. vWire was released in the summer of 2009 and then killed by the end of that year as Tripwire shifted its focus to an acquisition it made for log management to expand the capabilities of its flagship product, Tripwire Enterprise.
Although Tripwire seemed to completely drop of the face of the earth, at least from the virtualization space, they continued to grow and expand in the Security and Compliance space led by the continued success of Tripwire Enterprise. All seemed to be going well for Tripwire as they filed for an IPO with the SEC and continued on its way to going public.
It seems those plans for going public have changed, or at the very least, delayed. It has been announced that the private equity investment firm Thoma Bravo has entered into an agreement to purchase Tripwire Inc for undisclosed terms. Thoma Bravo has quite the portfolio with investments in companies like Attachmate Corporation, LANDesk Software Inc. and SonicWALL Inc. to name a few. I do not think Tripwire Inc will focus on the virtualization space specificately and will continue down the path of being able to monitor and report on as many different types of hardware in the infrastructure that it can. It’s lack of focus on cloud computing or virtualization in general may really come back to haunt Tripwire in the near future, but they are jumping on to the bandwagon by changing the marketing approach to add mention of the securing the cloud. “Secured by Tripwire – IT Security and Compliance for Cloud and Managed Service Providers”. I really think Tripwire is going to have to work on expanding its own portfolio itself by continuing to innovate and expand its horizons. I was working for Tripwire throughout the creation and release of vWire and have nothing but good things to say about the people and the company itself. I found Tripwire to be an absolutely wonderful place to work and I wish them well and continued success moving forward.