2010年8月20日 星期五

FW: IDC LINK: Intel's $7.7B McAfee Acquisition: Baking Security Vs. Smearing It On


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寄件者: Sandi Meyer (MKT-US)
傳送日期: Friday, August 20, 2010 11:38:36 PM
收件者: Newsbank
主旨: Fwd: IDC LINK: Intel's $7.7B McAfee Acquisition: Baking Security Vs. Smearing It On
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Begin forwarded message:

From: idclink@idc.com
Date: August 20, 2010 8:18:37 AM PDT
To: sandi_meyer@trendmicro.com
Subject: IDC LINK: Intel's $7.7B McAfee Acquisition:  Baking Security Vs. Smearing It On
Reply-To: link+reply+C57E5FFB325496558525685D00781AAD+lcUS22462910@pmail.idc.com

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Intel's $7.7B McAfee Acquisition: Baking Security Vs. Smearing It On
, Christian A. Christiansen, Phil Hochmuth
August 20, 2010

Intel's intent to buy McAfee underscores the trend towards baking security technologies into the "the fabric" or "guts" of computing. IDC believes that anti-malware, intrusion and fraud detection, and data protection will become as integral to mobile devices, PCs, and servers as the BIOS, video drivers and disk controllers. The planned integration of McAfee's security technology into Intel's silicon is an overall benefit to consumers and businesses. However, acquisitions can also cause problems for partners, competitors, and customers.

Acquisition motives, strategy and fallout

A Why did Intel buy McAfee? Intel already had a long-running partnership with McAfee to integrate security into board- and chip-level functions. IDC believes that Intel sees security as a critical feature and needs to own the intellectual property.

Intel expects McAfee to drive the sale of more chips, diversify its portfolio, and dampen the historical revenue cyclicality of its chip business. Intel believes that if computing is secure right out of the box (whether mobile, server, PC laptop or other), the more boxes with "Intel inside" will get sold. As for revenue diversification, Maintenance revenues from security software will help smooth out the seasonality of Intel's business. Vertical integration is also a driver. The IT industry consolidation continues as vendors try to defend their core position by selling more of the software stack. For Intel security is not new - they embedded security functionality in chips years ago with the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) technology.

Intel did pay a high premium for McAfee's, 60% over the August 19th stock price. This implies there was a bidding war among large, powerful and well-capitalized, IT companies, possibly EMC, IBM and HP. This will no doubt create some sore losers. Top competitors and leading vendors in adjacent markets may challenge this deal in court. Symantec, EMC, HP, IBM, even Microsoft ― all with varying degrees of security, software and hardware interests ― are no doubt threatened by the idea of being "locked out" of integrating their respective technologies at the chip-and-board level of computing, which Intel dominates.

As McAfee will be an independent subsidiary, Intel claims that relationships with other security partners will not change, and likewise. But this will be hard to maintain.

A combined Intel/McAfee will also reshape the mobile and PC security OEM dynamic. The Intel/McAfee combination will put endpoint security vendors ― mainly Symantec, but others such as Trend Micro, Sophos and others ― at a serious disadvantage in negotiations with device makers such as HP, Dell, Acer, Toshiba. There is also a potential for a shakeup of the OEM market for security on mobile devices as well. Today, McAfee's mobile security offerings are sold directly to the enterprise, through the carrier, or through an embedded model for OEM's. Given Intel's relationship with device OEM's, Intel will be able to broaden its embedded model out even further and try to get McAfee mobile security embedded on as many mobile devices as possible.

The enterprise side is a bit more complicated though as it involves the sale of a console to manage the security settings and policies, and multiple platforms that must be supported. So while this acquisition could open new opportunities on the embedded side, it will be important for the company to recognize the differences between consumer and enterprise mobility purchases and develop (or retain) strategies that appropriately target each market.

PCs, Embedded, mobile and consumer devices

This deal is a bid for Intel to capture value in the next era of computing – conncted devices. Over the next 5 years, we expect that billions of new kinds of devices will be connected to the internet. These devices will require a tigher level of integration between the hardware and software in order to deliver adequate levels of security without significant user intervention. We regard this announcement as an expension of the trend whereby security technology moves from stand-alone software and appliances into system-level components and chips. A crucial strategy behind the deal is the integration of security into network-connected devices that are non-traditional PC/server platforms. Building McAfee security into the board-and-chip level will strengthen the inherent security of such devices because the systems will no longer rely on being secured by underlying software. (Intel's near-billion-dollar buy of Wind River Systems last year shows the vendor's intent here). This "hardware-enhanced Security" vision is where the real opportunity is. Intel can also leverage McAfee's technology for "whitelisting" ― the blocking of all processes except a select, few functions on a system ― to provide chip-level security features in devices such as cable boxes and smart grid meters, providing strong authentication controls for each step of a connected devices process for connecting to a network and sending and receiving data.

Again, there is risk associated with this opportunity as well; having potentially all embedded devices protected by a single security technology will sit well with no security expert. And McAfee's recent blunder with a faulty security update patch sent to customers, which crippled thousands of machines, allays no fears here.

Enterprise, data center and cloud

Beyond connected devices, the other end of the McAfee/Intel opportunity spectrum is cloud ― the ubiquitous, bottomless computing, storage and application resource providing value to connected devices. The foundation of cloud technology is virtualization, and the integration of Intel/McAfee security technology could greatly bolster security capabilities for virtualized platforms. Security technology embedded beneath a virtual server layer, and extending to all hosts running at higher levels will provide high levels of security, coupled with greater scale, processing/resource efficiency and environmental friendliness than many current implementations. Intel's already established VT and vPro technologies are the platforms for integrating more deeply with McAfee security technologies ― from antivirus to intrusion detection and data protection. These are technologies enterprises and cloud providers have struggled over the last few years to implement successfully in virtual environments.

Also on the enterprise front is the potential for deeper management and control of connected devices ― beyond corporate PCs ― via McAfee's ePolicy Orchestrator (ePO) management platform. Blog posts from McAfee CEO Dave DeWalt and CTO Kurtz both discuss Intel's pillars being energy efficient performance and connectivity. McAfee's far-reaching management and provisioning software platform ePO can will be a strategic tool to provide efficient energy management ― i.e., the automated powering off devices more intelligently. Also having antivirus code on chips could make the software more efficient on endpoints, also yielding power savings. ePO could also be expanded to cover many non-PC or embedded devices, such as smart phones, printers, HVAC systems, and other devices in an enterprise.

Contributors:

Phil Hochmuth, Program Manager, Security Products; David Senf, Director, Infrastructure Solutions Group, IDC Canada, Tim Brunt, Senior Analyst, Personal Computing & Technology, IDC Canada; Stacy Crook Senior Research Analyst, Mobile Enterprise; Christian A. Christiansen, Program Vice President
Security Products & Services; Charles Kolodgy, Research Vice President, Secure Products; John Grady
Sr. Research Analyst,



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