Intel Completes $7.68B McAfee Buyout In All-Cash Deal

The big news in the last fews days is that Intel has completed it’s buy-out of McAfee in a $7.6 Billion dollar all-cash deal, it seems like security on the chipset/CPU is going to be a reality. We wrote about the initial acquisition back in August 201 and Intel have been working hard to get the deal past all the regulatory boards in the US and Europe.

McAfee is actually the world’s second-largest security software company after Symantec, so this acquisition makes them a serious player in the security industry.

Intel has completed its $7.68 billion acquisition of security vendor McAfee, the chip maker announced on Monday.

The all-cash deal makes Intel a security industry powerhouse, giving it a broad range of consumer and enterprise security products. Though the acquisition has left some observers scratching their heads, Intel says it needs the McAfee technology to help it bake security into its microprocessors and chipsets — especially as Intel looks to become more competitive in smartphones and other portable devices.

“Intel and McAfee believe today’s approach to security does not adequately address the billions of new Internet-ready devices, including PCs, mobile and wireless devices, TVs, cars, medical devices and ATM machines,” Intel said Monday in a statement announcing the acquisition’s close. “With the surge in cyber threats, providing protection to a diverse online world requires a fundamentally new approach involving software, hardware and services.”

They will be running McAfee as a fully owned subsidiary and they also be leveraging other companies they have acquired to work together with the McAfee arm (companies such as Wind River).

As they said, the current approach to computer security (especially in the consumer sector) is stuck at least 10 years behind what is actually happening. I’m not sure if this merger can improve anything, but more security in the hardware/CPU/chipset can’t hurt really can it?

Yah of course some clever chap is going to find a way to disable it/block it or simply circumnavigate the protection – but it’ll still be better than nothing.

Intel had been working to get the deal approved by U.S. and European Union regulators since it was announced last August. The European Commission, in particular, had expressed concerns that Intel would give McAfee special treatment when it came to its processors and chipsets, locking other security vendors out of the technology. Those concerns had reportedly been threatening to hold up the deal, but late last month the European Commission announced that Intel had assuaged its concerns.

Although McAfee’s technology can now be integrated into a wide range of Intel products, McAfee itself will be run as a subsidiary, operated out of Intel’s Software and Services Group. That group is run by Renée James, who will now be the boss of McAfee chief Dave DeWalt.

Anyway at least the acquisition is wrapped up now so we can keep an eye on any plans they have been brewing since last year. It’ll be interesting to see if there are any major changes in the direction of McAfee or to be really optimistic – will we see McAfee anti-virus software improve?

I don’t believe Intel will try and play the anti-trust game and lock AMD out of the McAfee party..but honestly – who knows what will happen?

Source: Network World