As we predicted in our Brief: The Emergence of the Cloud Security Gateway, this market is consolidating fast. Blue Coat Systems announced this morning that they are acquiring Elastica. Forrester estimates that the acquisition price was between USD $280M-300M, while Blue Coat Systems has already spent an estimated $180-200M on Perspecsys. Here's how Forrester expects Blue Coat Systems will assemble their Cloud Security Gateway solution:

* Elastica intellectual property (IP): will be used for a) behavioral profiling, b) predictive analytics and c) anomaly detection in access to cloud applications.

* Perspecsys IP: will be used for a) cloud encryption and b) key management.

Blue Coat Systems has a herculean task on their hands: they have to successfully manage

1) Understanding existing Elastica and Perspecsys product portolios

2) Integrating Elastica and Perspecsys product portfolios into one single CSG offering

3) Integrating the resulting CSG solution with existing Blue Coat Systems solutions,

4) while managing the natural differecens,  post-acquisition attrition of key management and engineering resources from both acquired companies. 

Forrester expects that Blue Coat Systems will be able to the above in 9-12 months successfully.