IT Support | Time to Worry About Intel's purchase of McAfee?
Posted by David Quiram on Mon, Aug 23, 2010
Is it really time to worry about Intel's possible purchase of McAfee? Will the IT Support sector be faced with another monopoly? Will we all be out of jobs as Intel takes the next step to creating Skynet?
I don't think so. Now, I am not an economic guru, nor am I really that obsessed with the trends of the larger corporations that have products in the Information Technology fields. But this one caught my interest. Intel has chips in EVERYTHING; McAfee has software deployed by users EVERYWHERE. So this move was intriguing to me when I heard about it.
Checking out articles and blogs about this topic I found several opinions and observations. The first is 7.68 Billion dollars is a lot of money for McAfee. It seems like a bid to purposely outdistance the other companies sniffing around MacAfee, almost desperate.
Some feel that the whole purchase is just to get a new foothold and profit sources for Intel. For example, Intel did purchase a company that made microscopes and such, but got out of the business due to poor returns. Others seem to think that this is just another step in Intel's strategic buying initiatives.
Intel is no stranger to acquisitions; they have acquired many companies over the years of ranging technologies, all in the name of diversification and strategic goals. For example, back in 1997 Intel went on a buying spree. They bought stakes in the following companies: One Touch Systems, a maker of interactive broadcast technology; bought a 4.9 percent stake in Internet communications company CMG Information, and previously acquired multiprocessor module vendor Corollary. At the time the interest that Intel was expressing was in broadband and visual technologies. Two quotes from Intel representative at that time indicate their intents:
Gerald Holshammer, GM, Intel Internet and Media Architecture Labs:
"We are excited by the potential of distance learning as an application for the visual connected business PC. Building on our technology, One Touch is now able to deliver the same interactive content to corporate PC desktops as it has already been delivering to satellite-enabled classrooms."
Intel corporate spokesman Tom Waldrop:
"We think it's very important to have wide availability of residential broadband communications to help increase the value of home PCs going forward, for example, you recently saw investments from us in Covad (EN, Dec. 8), which has some ex-Intel employees in the area of DSL (digital subscriber line)." Charles McMinn, Chuck Haas and Dhruv Khanna have formed Covad to enable communications over plain old copper telephone lines. Intel is Covad's first customer.
These statements were made in 1997, 13 years ago. This shows the vision that Intel has for growth and the industry. Both the distance learning and a little thing called broadband have greatly impacted how we interact, work, learn, and shop. Maybe the next step is to put all that into a mobile device instead of the computer and laptops.
Most all observers and Intel itself all say that the move is another strategic step to better position the company in the market. With having McAfee in its corner it will have better access and control of the security it wants to put in place on its devices. Intel is showing a greater interest in the mobile device market from smart phones to tablets. Intel has embraced security as a requirement for its products. Another point is that McAfee has purchased several companies whose prevue is mobile security, so they are already heading down that road.
Will this be a good or bad thing, who knows? But purchasing a product with Intel chips and now possible proprietary security software or even hardware, will limit options for the users.
On the upside, if Intel follows through with their strategic view and gets involved with the security on the smart phones and pads, I will be a happier user. With more personal and financial information being manipulated through mobile devices, the greater the need for security on the mobile devices.
Jared Newman of Pcworld summed this well in his blog Intel's McAfee Buy: 3 Things it Could Mean:
The Boring Answer: Intel Wants McAfee's Acquisitions
As TechCrunch points out, McAfee recently acquired Trust Digital and TenCube, both of which deal in mobile security. The former provides enterprise protection for smartphones, including the iPhone, and the latter is the maker of WaveSecure, software that's available to consumers for Android, Blackberry, Symbian, and Windows Mobile phones.
The Wacky Answer: Intel Computing
Let's not forget Meego, the operating system Intel and Nokia are developing together for smartphones, tablets and netbooks. For Meego to take off, it'll need to be secure, and Intel will have better luck with its own security company.
The Realistic Answer: Security for a Changing Intel
A comment to Reuters from Renee James, head of Intel's software and services group, is most telling: "We have lots of activities going on in growing connected devices ... from connected television to mobile devices," she said, adding that Intel believes it can enhance security with hardware.
Intel's press release speaks of "a product" to be introduced next year. Given Intel's push into television with Google TV, and mobile devices with the upcoming Medfield smartphone chip, my guess is that Intel will launch one security product that's tied to all its new hardware ventures, a kind of guarantee that when you buy a connected device powered by Intel, it'll be safe from threats on the Internet.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/203669/intels_mcafee_buy_3_things_it_could_mean.html?tk=hp_new>