Intel to acquire McAfee for $7.68 billion; cloud security becomes key priority
Summary: Tech giant Intel on Thursday announced that it would acquire security firm McAfee for about $7.68 billion.
Tech giant Intel on Thursday announced that it would acquire security firm McAfee for about $7.68 billion, placing a price on the company's common stock of about $48 per share.
Santa Clara, Calif.-based McAfee will become a fully-owned subsidiary of Intel, and become a part of Intel's Software and Services Group. The deal will close pending McAfee shareholder approval and regulatory clearance.
The acquisition underlines Intel's bet on "hardware-enhanced security" and demonstrates that that security is a necessary component as the tech company's reach expands to handle billions of new Internet-ready devices, such as mobile phones and computers, TVs, cars, medical devices and ATM machines.
Intel says it has raised the priority of security to the same level as energy-efficiency and Internet connectivity.
"With the rapid expansion of growth across a vast array of Internet-connected devices, more and more of the elements of our lives have moved online," Intel CEO Paul Otellini said in a statement. "In the past, energy-efficient performance and connectivity have defined computing requirements. Looking forward, security will join those as a third pillar of what people demand from all computing experiences."
McAfee has enjoyed double-digit growth over the past year, as well as large margins, to the tune of almost 80 percent gross. It counts about 6,100 employees in its ranks and managed to rake in $2 billion in revenue in 2009.
Here's what Intel senior vice president Renée James had to say about her new group:
Hardware-enhanced security will lead to breakthroughs in effectively countering the increasingly sophisticated threats of today and tomorrow. This acquisition is consistent with our software and services strategy to deliver an outstanding computing experience in fast-growing business areas, especially around the move to wireless mobility.
McAfee is the next step in this strategy, and the right security partner for us. Our current work together has impressive prospects, and we look forward to introducing a product from our strategic partnership next year.
The McAfee deal comes after a series of acquisitions by Intel, ranging in scope from gaming to visual computing to embedded device and machine software.
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Talkback
Smart move
On the McAfee thing, security is one of the main things that keeps our company from committing more work to cloud systems. Now I'm waiting to see if Intel gets into the cloud provider business. It's not so far-fetched, the big semiconductor companies have massive compute-farms to support chip design and manufacturing, and Intel has a lot of experience internally in managing them.
Possible combo
I wouldn't be surprised to see HP buy up AMD.
RE: Intel to acquire McAfee for $7.68 billion; cloud security becomes key priority
They were prevented from doing so by their Itanium alliance with Intel, now that Itanium is all but dead, it could be a possibility!
RE: Intel to acquire McAfee for $7.68 billion; cloud security becomes key priority
I think HP with the a recent acquisition of Palm and WebOS should seriously look for acquiring location & Mapping platform company, they are way behind on that compared to their peers such as Nokia, RIM and Apple....
Jim
RE: Intel to acquire McAfee for $7.68 billion; cloud security becomes key priority
Actually it's AMD who should buy Symantec becuase since AMD makes chips for desktops and almost all mobile devices Symantec should be AMD's security subsidiary.
IMOP HP would not make a good fit since they only make printers, destop and laptop PCs, servers and netbooks. But
on the other hand since HP PC's, Laptops and netbooks do have AMD chips in them it would give HP a hand in making sure that their mobile devices are secure.
nah
RE: Intel to acquire McAfee for $7.68 billion; cloud security becomes key priority
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RE: Intel to acquire McAfee for $7.68 billion; cloud security becomes key priority
RE: Intel to acquire McAfee for $7.68 billion; cloud security becomes key priority
RE: Intel to acquire McAfee for $7.68 billion; cloud security becomes key priority
RE: Intel to acquire McAfee for $7.68 billion; cloud security becomes key priority
RE: Intel to acquire McAfee for $7.68 billion; cloud security becomes key priority
RE: Intel to acquire McAfee for $7.68 billion; cloud security becomes key priority
RE: Intel to acquire McAfee for $7.68 billion; cloud security becomes key priority
Is this the beginning of Anti-virus Chips?
Does this mean that Intel might think about creating Anti-Virus chips / cards?
What if all your AV requirements were passed of to a separate processor & RAM? Freeing up resources on the CPU & System RAM for actual running of the OS & software.
We use McAfee here and it has some bad side effects when it updates the DAT files on the client machines. On Virtual Machines (1GHz VCPU, 1GB VRAM) if they update happens when the user is using the machine it grinds everything to a halt for the duration of the update, the rest of the time everything runs smoothly. Moving that work away to a separate chip set could be a constant on-access scan with no performance dip.
Or am I just shooting way off?
RE: Intel to acquire McAfee for $7.68 billion; cloud security becomes key priority
How do you update hardware?
I liked my Amiga! But there are equivalents today - The IBM Cell and the Sun CMT chips use a coprocessor architecture (as opposed to multiple cores). You could theoretically program a Cell to be an Amiga-on-a-chip with each "cell" doing the co-processing (Denise, Fat Agnus, Paula, etc...).
No, hardware AV is not the solution.
Hardware AV is not a good solution. Hardware is fixed you can't change and that isn't a good fit for AV.
AV on a Chip
Couldn't agree more...by doing it at the hardware level it could make security OS independent. Wouldn't that be a neat trick?