Intel buys McAfee. No, seriously.

[TuxDave]

Several security analysts today expressed surprise that Intel would purchase security tool maker McAfee, noting that at first glance the move makes little sense for a pure hardware firm.

Would it surprise anyone if I said that Intel has a crapton of software engineers?

 

[The Boston Dangler]

some good zingers in this thread

 

[gorcorps]

Since Intel knows how processors and hardware are supposed to work, then they can make mcafee much more efficient and less clunky/resource hogging. Right? Sure... That'll do...

 

[skace]

some good zingers in this thread

Was thinking the same thing

 

[sandorski]

Larrabee will be resurrected as a McAfee Security Card.

 

[Aharami]

So who had McAfee shares?

i wish I did. Mcafee's stock jumped 57%! But only the insiders in the know bought in yesterday

 

[Train]

Would it surprise anyone if I said that Intel has a crapton of software engineers?

I was gonna say. Intel hasn't been a "pure hardware firm" in quite some time.

 

[seepy83]

I'm not very suprised by this aquisition.

I'm thinking anti-malware at the hardware level for protecting hypervisors. Could be way off, but the industry has clearly adopted virtualization in a major way...

 

[dwell]

Only makes sense as McAfee AV turns a 3.2Ghz quad-core into a 1.2Ghz single-core performance wise. Probably bought them to add more delay loops to their code.

 

[Cogman]

McAfee really isn't THAT bad of a purchase. Every dell that gets sold is bundled with McAfee crapware.

My guess is that intel wants to enter the antivirus industry so they chose a well known company to buy. I doubt they will throw away all McAfee code, but I don't doubt they are going to seriously overhaul it to make it lighting fast.

The other thing I could see them doing is analyzing the virus detection heuristics to see what sort of instructions would be useful to introduce to make virus detection much faster.

 

[thegimp03]

From a logistical standpoint, Intel and McAfee are right down the street from each other in Santa Clara so it's not going to be too hard to integrate outside of possible culture differences. Intel doesn't make that many acquisitions, or acquisitions that are big enough that everyone would hear about them. The only thing that doesn't make sense to me is that AMD acquired ATI a couple years back...that kind of makes sense as they're both in business in computer hardware. Intel being a hardware company and MFE being a software company, doesn't make as much sense.

From a profitability standpoint, Intel must really be thinking about business/enterprise users as I think MFE makes most of its revenue from that line of business, as opposed to its consumer line.

Wonder if anybody is looking at buying Symantec. Their market cap is only ~$3B more than MFE but their revenues are ~4x MFE's.

 

[Hacp]

Doesn't Intel write its own successful compilers? It has a good C++ and Fortran compiler right?

 

[Eli]

McOC? McAfee On Chip? lol

 

[holden j caufield]

lol is that a misprint. McAfee for 7.5+ Billion? There are an assortment of free tools that work 5x better and take 5x less resources.

 

[tranceport]

To be clear McAfee software for home does suck.

But their enterprise software is amazing. ePolicy Orchestrator is what really makes McAfee so great in the enterprise.

Symantec and Kaspersky do not have anything near the power of ePolicy.

I've used all 3 in the enterprise.

 

[techs]

From a logistical standpoint, Intel and McAfee are right down the street from each other in Santa Clara so it's not going to be too hard to integrate outside of possible culture differences. Intel doesn't make that many acquisitions, or acquisitions that are big enough that everyone would hear about them. The only thing that doesn't make sense to me is that AMD acquired ATI a couple years back...that kind of makes sense as they're both in business in computer hardware. Intel being a hardware company and MFE being a software company, doesn't make as much sense.

From a profitability standpoint, Intel must really be thinking about business/enterprise users as I think MFE makes most of its revenue from that line of business, as opposed to its consumer line.

Wonder if anybody is looking at buying Symantec. Their market cap is only ~$3B more than MFE but their revenues are ~4x MFE's.

Oh, the fun I could have with that.
but I will resist.

 

[bfdd]

First move is to change how it is pronounced from Mac-Ah-fee to Mah-Ca-Fee.

This is the hope and change I've been waiting for.

 

[Ika]

Engadget also mentioned how Intel bought TI's cable modem division recently. There may be something going on there.

 

[jpeyton]

What a crappy business decision. Guaranteed money loser on this deal.

 

[Fox5]

Maybe Intel wants to do some value add. Rather than drop prices to match AMD, just throw in a free copy of mcafee.

 

[techs]

Maybe Intel wants to do some value add. Rather than drop prices to match AMD, just throw in a free copy of mcafee.

Methinks you and I have a different version of what's actually value.

 

[mrcaffeinex]

I just finished reading the article online here: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-intel-mcafee-20100820,0,764491.story and in the article it states:
"...the acquisition, one of the year's largest technology deals, could allow it to build McAfee's anti-virus technology directly into its chips."

Hopefully they can build a better mousetrap now because I stopped using McAfee ages ago due to increased resource hogging.

Now I wonder how long it will take them to start integrating anti-copying and such software directly into the processors of the future...

-MrCaffeineX

 

[Narse]

To be clear McAfee software for home does suck.

But their enterprise software is amazing. ePolicy Orchestrator is what really makes McAfee so great in the enterprise.

Symantec and Kaspersky do not have anything near the power of ePolicy.

I've used all 3 in the enterprise.

I was just going to post this. McAfee's enterprise software is great. I used to have people buy the enterprise client instead of the crap bloatware home versions of AV.

 

[jpeyton]

If MCrapee is going to be built-into Intel processors on the hardware level, I'm buying AMD.

 

[So]

McAfee does a lot more than personal anti-virus software. I bet Intel cares al ot more about their business products.

Except that their business products suck too. My company switched to Symantec a couple of years back -- and symantec's non-norton enterprise AV is much less of a how than Macafee.