For some of you, the acquisition of Burton by Gartner might have been the deal of the year. I (for sure, acting in the same market) will not comment on this. But for me, it hasn't been the deal of the year even in these first two weeks. Much more important is the acquisition of Archer by RSA. RSA Security, a EMC subsidiary for several years now, has bought one of the leading GRC vendors. In fact it was EMC which acquired Archer but within EMC it has been RSA Security.
Archer is one of the major players in the Enterprise GRC market - I recently discussed the various segments of the GRC market. With the acquisition of Archer, RSA - until now a provider of very specialized components in the SIEM, DLP, and other security related markets - tries to close the gap between the high-level view of Archer (being mainly an Enterprise GRC provider with some level of CCM). That definitely makes sense. And it fits well in EMC/RSAs strategy for Cloud Security. Thus, by integrating the tools of RSA (and other EMC companies), providing information for automated controls, and the high-level view of Archer, the drill-down features, and the manual control capabilities as well as the overall policy and control management, EMC (with RSA and Archer) might be well able to make a big step forward towards an integrated GRC offering.
However, this shouldn't be limited to security-related IT controls but should cover all types of IT controls, including service management, access governance, and others. Standards like Cobit show how many different controls are relevant. And, from the high-level perspective (the Archer view), it should even go beyond IT controls and IT GRC. Thus the acquisition of Archer shouldn't be understood as the final but the first step. Integration of what EMC and partners are offering is the logical next step - but to fully deliver on the idea of an integrated GRC, EMC might have to add some other technologies (like access governance and, especially with focus on the cloud, service management).
Anyhow: The acquisition makes sense, no doubt about that. And I'm convinced that it hasn't been the last one in the GRC market for this year.