Sophos To Sell ActiveState

Security solutions provider Sophos will sell its ActiveState unit to Canadian venture capital firm Pender Financial Group for $2,250,000. Pender Financial intends to acquire ActiveState through a newly incorporated company, which will allow ActiveState to become independent. The company will be relocated to Canada and will be led by Bart Copeland, who will become the new company's CEO.

"Sophos is focused on ensuring their success in the space of threat management. There was broad agreement that ActiveState needs to stand on its own feet if it is to continue to do good things. This [sale] results in two independent organizations, each focused on its own needs," said David Ascher, CTO and VP of Engineering at ActiveState.

ActiveState, acquired by Sophos in September 2003, is known for its ActivePerl, ActiveTcl, and ActivePython scripting engines, as well as its Komodo IDE, which supports Perl, Tcl, Python, Ruby, and PHP. Ascher said the company will continue to provide free distributions of ActivePerl, ActiveTcl, and ActivePython. The company also intends to stick to it's current plans for product development, sales, and support, and will soon release new product versions for the Intel-based Apple OS X platform.