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Intel Sheds McAfee
Intel has sold the Intel Security business for $3.5bn less than it paid for it six years ago.
Intel Security, previously and better known as McAfee, has been sold to private equity firm TPG for $4.2bn, despite Intel paying $7.7bn for it in 2010.
The chip firm will receive $3.1bn in cash as part of the transaction and retain a 49 per cent minority stake. TPG will take control with a 51 per cent stake, and will invest $1.1bn in the company.
Intel Security is based on the McAfee business and was renamed two years ago. The company will revert to the better known McAfee brand, despite John McAfee reportedly suing Intel over the use of his name.
The transaction is expected to close in the second quarter of 2017, and Chris Young, general manager of Intel Security Group, will become CEO of McAfee.
Young described TPG in an open letter to stakeholders as a “seasoned technology investor” that was “attracted to our current momentum and long-term potential”.
He claimed that McAfee currently protects “more than a quarter of a billion endpoints” and more than 200 million consumers, and is present in two thirds of the world’s 2,000 largest companies.
Intel CEO Brian Krzanich claimed that, despite the sale, security “remains important in everything we do at Intel”.
“We will continue to integrate industry-leading security and privacy capabilities in our products from the cloud to billions of smart, connected computing devices,” he added.
Bryan Taylor, a partner at TPG, said that the company had “long identified the cyber security sector, which has experienced strong growth due to the increasing volume and severity of cyber attacks, as one of the most important areas in technology”.
Intel’s acquisition of McAfee Security in 2010 was intended to enable the company to beef up security around PCs and sell McAfee antivirus and other security software around its core business.
However, the combination never worked as the money to be made in the security business became increasingly focused on the data center and cloud computing.
Courtesy-TheInq
Is Intel Going To Dump McAfee
Intel has run out of ideas about what it is going to do with it its security business and is apparently planning to flog it off.
Five years ago Intel bought McAfee for $7.7bn acquisition. Two years ago it re-branded it as Intel Security. There was talk about chip based security and how important this would be as the world moved to the Internet of Things.
Now the company has discussed the future of Intel Security with bankers, including potentially the outfit. The semiconductor company has been shifting its focus to higher-growth areas, such as chips for data center machines and Internet-connected devices, as the personal-computer market has declined.
The security sector has seen a lot of interest from private equity buyers. Symantec said earlier this month it was acquiring Web security provider Blue Coat for $4.65 billion in cash, in a deal that will see Silver Lake, an investor in Symantec, enhancing its investment in the merged company, and Bain Capital, majority shareholder in Blue Coat, reinvesting $750 million in the business through convertible notes.
However Intel’s move into the Internet of Things does make it difficult for it to exit the security business completely. In fact some analysts think it will only sell of part of the business and keep some key bits for itself.
Courtesy-Fud
McAfee’s Biometric Software Coming Soon
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A McAfee security product that will use biometric technology to authenticate users will be available for download by the end of the year, said Kirk Skaugen, senior vice president and general manager of the PC Client Group at Intel, last week.
“Your biometrics basically eliminate the need for you to enter passwords for Windows log in and eventually all your websites ever again,” Skaugen said.
Further product details were not immediately available. But one of the major inconveniences in using PCs and tablets is remembering passwords, which biometrics can tame.
An average user has about 18 passwords and biometric authentication will make PCs easier to use, Skaugen said.
Biometric authentication isn’t new. It’s being used in Apple Pay, where fingerprint authentication helps authorize credit card payments through the iPhone or iPad. Intel has been working on multiple forms of biometric authentication through fingerprint, gesture, face and voice recognition.
McAfee is owned by Intel, and the chip maker is building smartphone, tablet and PC technology that takes advantage of the security software. Intel has also worked on biometric technology for wearable devices like SMS Audio’s BioSport In-Ear Headphones, which can measure a person’s heart rate.
Intel also wants to make PCs and tablets easier to use through wireless charging, display, docking and data transfers. Such capabilities would eliminate the need to carry power brick and cables for displays and data transfers. Such capabilities will start appearing in laptops next year with sixth-generation Core chips code-named Skylake, which will be released in the second half.
Intel’s Itanium Processor Available Until 2022
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HP will have access to Intel’s Itanium processor until 2022, according to Intel’s Kirk Skaugen.
Skaugen, who used to be VP of Intel’s Datacentre and Connected Systems Group, testified under oath during the HP versus Oracle lawsuit that HP and Intel had an arrangement that “enabled HP to have access to the Itanium microprocessor through 2022, and that HP could extend even longer”. Skaugen’s testimony was submitted as part of court documents filed on 23 April and gives some indication of how long both HP and Intel were expecting to push Itanium.
Oracle, which has been involved in an increasingly bitter spat with HP over Itanium and the hiring of its current co-president and former HP CEO Mark Hurd, claims Intel’s Itanium was on its way out, alleging that HP mislead it and customers, leading to its decision to drop support for the IA64 architecture.
However, according to HP, “Oracle resorts to mischaracterising HP’s statements, taking them out of appropriate context, or misstating the relevant timeline.”
HP claims Skaugen’s comments show that when HP said Itanium had a long future it wasn’t lying. “By any measure, all of HP’s statements regarding the length of its roadmap and the future of the Itanium microprocessor were true,” HP said in documents filed with the court.
Skaugen’s comments are something of a surprise, not because they show an agreement between HP and Intel – HP already admitted that one existed – but the length of Intel’s commitment to HP on Itanium and the fact that HP could extend it.
HP’s language suggests that it, as the customer, had the upper hand in the contract with Intel, with the firm saying, “Intel was committed by contract to continue producing Itanium microprocessors”. Skaugen’s testimony in court supports HP’s claim.
Did HP Really Need Intel?
Back in the day HP said it chose Intel to co-develop Itanium due to its process technology, as it didn’t have the cash to fund next generation fabs.
Intel has often been the butt of Itanium jokes, but HP invested as much, if not more into the enterprise. Kirk Bresniker, CTO of HP’s Business Critical Systems told The INQUIRER that HP needed Intel’s manufacturing capability. Bresniker said HP’s decision to partner with Intel was due to the firm realising it couldn’t afford the VLSI manufacturing process iteration needed for developing competitive chips.
Bresniker said, “It is really an extension of the CISC processor that led us to partner with Intel on the Itanium. We knew we weren’t going to be able to maintain the investment levels neccessary to continue to fund deep sub-micron fabs.”
Until HP’s foray with Itanium, the firm was known for its PA-RISC systems, some of which Bresniker designed himself back in the early 1990s. Bresniker said, “We got to the point of microprocessor development and more importantly the economics of fabrication environments and realised we were facing transition to the deep sub-micron [fabrication processes] and potentially writing billions and billions of dollars worth of cheques for fabrication, and part of the impetuous for us to partner with Intel on the Itanium design was that we wanted to have access to the world’s number one microprocessor silicon fabrication.”
While HP continued with PA-RISC chips well into the new millennium, HP’s decision to offload the work of actually producing chips onto Intel could be seen as shrewd move, and one that firms such as AMD did a decade later. The cost of process node iteration is getting ever higher, which is something that Intel itself admits.
Not surprisingly, Bresniker wouldn’t be drawn on the demise of Itanium, though HP did announce Project Odyssey late last year, which effectively mixes and matches the firm’s Itanium kit with Intel Xeon servers. He did admit that the firm had to go towards x86 in the mission-critical market, Bresniker was quick to point out that while Intel is porting more features from the Itanium chip, not everything will be moved over.