MONTREAL — SimpleAccess Inc., a security-access specialist, has changed its name to Shiva Corp. after acquiring the former Shiva assets from Intel Corp. While both Shiva and Intel are keeping mum on terms, sources in the financial community claim that the Shiva business went for less than a tenth the $180 million Intel paid for it in 1998. If so, the deal would mirror Intel's late-September fire sale of the former Ziatech to Performance Technologies Inc. for $3.8 million.
"Intel clearly wants to wipe the books clean in calendar 2002 of any system-level networking business," one analyst said off the record last week. "What's odd is that the Shiva brand could have kept Intel in the remote-access race if the company hadn't insisted on an OEM-only stance. Now, Simple Access can grab the Shiva name, run with it and probably score a first down."
Mark Silverman, chief operating officer of the rechristened Shiva, said that Intel is retaining an equity stake of undisclosed size in the company. That may pay off, since Silverman said distributors and resellers began calling once they learned the Shiva name would be coming back. "It's not just a matter of people remembering the name. The reputation is such that we've been swamped with calls."
Shiva gained that reputation as a Macintosh-oriented remote-access and modem company in the early 1990s, but by mid-decade had shifted to a mix of dial-up and digital access systems based on both Windows and Mac platforms. As it moved to central-office aggregators, the Shiva name became as well-known among service providers as it was in enterprise accounts. Shiva added small routers and some of the industry's first virtual private network access products in 1996-'97, but was having trouble making a stand against Ascend Communications and Cisco Systems when Intel made its acquisition offer.
Mission: broadband VPN
SimpleAccess, meanwhile, was incorporated in late 2001with offices in Montreal and Newton, Mass., and a mission to develop broadband VPN access products. Shortly after incorporation, Silverman said, "a leading U.S. equipment provider" he would not identify sold SimpleAccess all product rights to its broadband-access system, which became the 8010 ADSL Access Router. In July, SimpleAccess bought another Canadian company, Galea Secured Networks Inc., to gain firewall and Secure Sockets Layer software technology.
Silverman said that former Shiva products not related to VPNs and security, such as LAN Rover, would be discontinued. The strategy for the new Shiva moving forward is to update those Shiva and Intel products relating to secure access, retain a common code and hardware base for the products, and add software enhancements from Galea and from SimpleAccess' own engineering teams.
Intel had maintained Shiva operations in Toronto and Bedford, Mass., as its Network Systems group. The new Shiva has opened a Toronto development facility close to the former Intel unit, though Silverman emphasized that the deal did not involve picking up any Intel leases. Instead, Shiva will have its own new facilities close to former Intel operations in the Toronto and Boston areas.
