Silent Circle buys out partner, raises funds in push to serve secure enterprise market

Silent Circle, part of SGP Technologies, has announced they have reached an agreement to buy out their partner in the joint venture, Geeksphone. SGP Technologies’ primary claim to fame is their Blackphone, a smartphone developed for users interested in maintaining a high level of privacy. Silent Circle will take over 100% ownership of SGP Technologies when the acquisition closes later this week allowing the company to implement “operation efficiencies” and pursue an “integrated product roadmap.”

As part of their announcement, Silent Circle also revealed that they have obtained $50 million in new capital financing to help it move to the next stage of its business plan. That step involves development of an “enterprise privacy ecosystem.”

Sources think Silent Circle may be positioning itself to step into the role that Blackberry used to fill before they stumbled. Key to this will be deployment of encrypted communications solutions. Although Silent Circle will have to contend with the realities of a “bring your own device” world, having their own hardware in terms of a smartphone and possibly a tablet may help them succeed.

Ross Perot, Jr., a Silent Circle investor notes,

“As the nature and volume of data breaches increase, institutional trust is eroding. There are companies that have been hacked and there are those that don’t know about it yet, which means that security in the traditional sense has failed us.  With the number of employees connecting to an enterprises’ network using their own devices rapidly rising, organizations need a different solution. In short, in a post-Sony and Gemalto world, security breaches have been made both enterprise and personal so it’s no longer an issue affecting just the boardroom.”

Silent Circle is planning to be at MWC 2015 next week and will likely reveal more information about their plans go forward. One question that may be answered is whether Geeksphone will continue to supply Blackphone hardware even though they are no longer a partner to the venture.

source: TechCrunch

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