ActiveState acquired by Sophos

[Kevin Bingham]

For those ActivePerl users out there.
-Kevin

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http://www.activestate.com/corporate/letter/

September 24, 2003

Dear ActiveState Customers,

Today, ActiveState announced that we have been acquired by Sophos, a 
leading provider of anti-virus software for business, headquartered in the 
UK. Under the terms of this deal, ActiveState is now a wholly-owned 
division of Sophos.

Naturally, you'll want to know our plans going forward, and how this 
acquisition might affect you. We'll make information available on our sites 
and mailing lists as details are finalized, but in the interim we'd like to 
share these key points:

Sophos is committed to supporting and extending ActiveState's involvement 
in the open source community. ActiveState's programming tools, language 
distributions, and support services will continue to be developed, 
supported, and marketed under the ActiveState name, in exactly the same way 
they have until now.


PureMessage, ActiveState's enterprise email protection software, will be 
integrated with Sophos's MailMonitor, as Sophos PureMessage. Organizations 
are increasingly demanding consolidated protection against security threats 
such as viruses, spam, and policy breaches. Through Sophos's global network 
of 4000 partners and subsidiaries, we can now deliver first-class 
enterprise email protection with local market support.


All of ActiveState's staff have been retained. The ActiveState development 
team will remain intact and continue to work out of ActiveState 
headquarters in Vancouver, Canada. Steve Munford will remain president of 
ActiveState and will also assume the role of global vice president, 
messaging, Sophos.


All ActiveState customers will use the same email addresses and phone 
numbers for customer support. We will continue to provide you with 
world-class customer service throughout this transition and beyond.



Peter Lammer, founder and joint CEO, Sophos, shares Sophos's reasons for 
the acquisition, "In acquiring ActiveState, Sophos gains an 
industry-leading anti-spam solution and a team of highly-skilled experts in 
Vancouver. Sophos also gains a tools and languages business with a 
tremendous reputation and cutting-edge technology. We're very excited by 
the potential for further development in this area.

"Like ActiveState, Sophos is committed to providing high-quality software 
and support. There are many synergies between our organizations, and we 
look forward to combining the best of both as we continue to provide you 
with industry-leading software solutions."

Analysts and industry experts have shared their support of this 
acquisition. Like them, all of us at ActiveState are excited by the 
opportunities ahead. We hope you share our enthusiasm.

 From all of us at ActiveState, thank you for your support.

Sincerely,
The ActiveState Team