Intel has bought information security specialist McAfee in a surprise deal valued at $7.68bn.
The chip maker has offered $48 a share in cash for the anti-virus firm, a 62 per cent premium of McAfee’s Wednesday closing price of $29.93 a share. Shares in McAfee leapt 58 per cent on the news while Intel’s stock dipped.
Both boards of directors have approved the deal, which is still subject to McAfee shareholder approval and regulatory approval.
Intel said the deal signalled its decision to put security on par with energy-efficient performance and internet connectivity as a strategic focus area.
“Today’s security approach does not fully address the billions of new Internet-ready devices connecting, including mobile and wireless devices, TVs, cars, medical devices and ATM machines as well as the accompanying surge in cyber threats,” it said.
McAfee is a solid but unspectacular second behind Symantec in the security software market. It booked $2bn in revenues last year.
We have had quite a few customers this month asking if they should take advantage of the Blackberry Enterprise Server Express free download.
We are advising customers to stay with the BES internet service even if they have their own exchange server.
The reason for this is the BES internet service works really well and does pretty much everything most users want.
Reading the myriad of technology blogs and general it support related blurb every day certainly gives me a reasonable snapshot of what’s happening with the world of technology.
Today I discovered that over the last few weeks a lot of technology related companies seem to be doing something they haven’t done in a while – reporting good sales.
Citrix – a firm with a very eclectic taste for applications that make money (and doing it better than anyone else in my opinion) reported a 7 times increase on profit in the first quarter compared to last year.
AMD – Intel’s biggest none threat did ok, but reading their financial report for the first quarter isn’t as easy as looking at the bottom line. In fact it was difficult to understand how they calculated their profit but apparently they did make some.
Microsoft – the evil empire smashed it with their best quarter ever. Now, when you think how much this company makes that is pretty unbelievable and one in the eye for any anti-capitalist penguin t-shirt wearing linux types.
Google – the golden goose up a massive 23% on revenue which is amazing because they did actually grow in 2009 during the same quarter.
The spoils though have to go to Apple who maybe not surprisingly due to the release of the ipad made a staggering 94% increase in profit compared to the first quarter of 2009.
So in summery it’s not looking bad for 2010.
A recent Mcafee update causes the very popular antivirus to delete a core part of Windows (SVChost.exe) because it thinks the process is a virus. In the computer world we call this a false positive.
Yesterday Smart Info Tech’s IT support Chester office received calls from 3 separate clients who had been stricken with the fault. We reacted quickly and managed to rectify their problems. We have not heard any issues affecting IT Support services in Cheshire, Liverpool, Manchester or Leeds and we have taken the initiative and solved the update problem before it affects any other clients.
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From McAfee -
McAfee is aware that a number of customers have incurred a false positive error due to this release. Corporations who kept a feature called “Scan Processes on Enable” in McAfee VirusScan Enterprise disabled, as it is by default, were not affected.
Our initial investigation indicates that the error can result in moderate to significant issues on systems running Windows XP Service Pack 3.
The faulty update was quickly removed from all McAfee download servers, preventing any further impact on customers. We are not aware of significant impact on consumers.
It support North Wales – Smart Info Tech Ltd
Smart Info Tech Ltd – providing IT support North Wales for over 5 years are pleased to announce record numbers of new customers this last 6 months in North Wales.
Smart IT provide IT support Denbigh, IT support Wrexham, IT support Rhyl as well as IT outsourcing services.
“North Wales is becoming a second home to us” says technology guru Sean Connolly “i’m even thinking of buying a house in Holywell”.
To find out more about IT Support North Wales click the link or for Denbigh and Rhyl click the text.
For information about our IT support and IT Outsourcing Services click this link
