Novell gets in on endpoint market, buys Senforce

It’ll be interesting to see in a year from now how many standalone endpoint security firms are left. Novell’s acquisition of Senforce on Monday shouldn’t come as a surprise, nor should the acquistion of any other company that helps customers protect networks from data that gets exposed on handheld devices.

Novell isn’t really known as a security firm, but it is a systems management firm, and endpoint security and systems management are really starting to go hand in hand. If the introduction of iPhones or other devices in the enterprise becomes really problematic IT managers may want to rely more on Symantec and its Hamlet project, but if you’re already a Novell shop it’s pretty handy to have some security tools rolled in.