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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
Google Upgrades Voice Search
October 8, 2015 by admin
Filed under Around The Net
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Google said it has constructed a better neural network that is making its voice search work faster and better in noisy environments.
“We are happy to announce that our new acoustic models are now used for voice searches and commands in the Google app (on Android and iOS), and for dictation on Android devices,” Google’s Speech Team wrote in a recent blog post . “In addition to requiring much lower computational resources, the new models are more accurate, robust to noise, and faster to respond to voice search queries.”
In 2013, Google brought the same voice recognition tools that had been working in Google Now to Google Search.
Along with being able to find information on the Internet, Google Voice Search also was able to find information for users in their Gmail, Google Calendar and Google+ accounts.
At the 2013 Google I/O developers conference, Amit Singhai, today a senior vice president and Google Fellow, said the future of search is in voice. For Google, he said, future searches will be more like conversations with your computer or device, which also will be able to give you information before you even ask for it.
The company went on to make it clear that it would continue to focus on voice search.
And this week’s announcement backs that up.
Google explained in its blog post that it has updated the neural network it’s using for voice search. A neural network is a computer system based on the way the human brain and nervous system work. It generally uses many processors operating in parallel.
The improved neural network is able to consume the incoming audio in larger chunks than conventional models without performing as many calculations.
“With this, we drastically reduced computations and made the recognizer much faster,” the team wrote. “We also added artificial noise and reverberation to the training data, making the recognizer more robust to ambient noise.”
Source-http://www.thegurureview.net/aroundnet-category/google-upgrades-voice-search.html
Intel’s Security Exec Jumps Ship
Michael Fey has left Intel Security Group to become chief operating officer at Blue Coat. Blue Coat is apparently not the traditional garb of a British Holiday Camp entertainer, but apparently a privately owned network security company.
Fey was one of the few top McAfee managers to stay with the company after it was bought by Intel in 2011. McAfee is now part of Intel Security Group, where Fey had been chief technology officer. Fey said that his role at Blue Coat would be “very similar” to his old job but he was allowed to focus on the cloud and the advanced threats space more.
“Blue Coat had tremendous growth behind the scenes and now I get to focus on taking that growth and trying to get it to the billion-dollar revenue mark,” he told Reuters.
Since the $7.7 billion acquisition by Intel, McAfee has lost senior managers and key talent in technology development, research and sales. At Blue Coat, Fey will replace David Murphy, who will stay on as a strategic adviser to the board.
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.
Samsung Plans To Go Low-End
February 13, 2012 by admin
Filed under Consumer Electronics
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Samsung Electronics Co, the world’s top television maker, has seen TV sales firming up so far this year and plans to launch cheaper TVs, as demand for lower-end models increase, the head of its TV business said on Wednesday.
Demand for lower-end TVs has been increasing in recent months as major South Korean retailers such as E-Mart Co introduced flat-screen models that are as much as 40 percent cheaper through alliances with small local manufacturers.
“As long as there’s demand, we’re open to get into that segment,” Kim Hyun-suk, executive vice president of Samsung’s visual display division, told reporters.
“We’ve been preparing to introduce cheap models and have been studying to optimize production costs and retail prices. Those (cheap) models will be ready for sale in one or two months.”
Samsung, the most profitable TV maker, also introduced on Wednesday its highest-end premium set that it hopes will help boost profitability, as a fragile global economy threatens to sap demand growth this year after no growth in 2010.
The ES8000 model has voice, motion and face recognition functions, as well as 3D and Internet-enabled capabilities. The models, available in sizes of between 46 and 65 inches, will go on sale from this weekend in South Korea before a global launch in March.
Kim said Samsung’s TV sales so far this year have been stronger than a year ago and demand from China remained solid.