Intel Buys McAfee
It’s another example of a large non-security company buying a security company. I’ve been talking about this sort of thing for two and a half years:
It’s not consolidation as we’re used to. In the security industry, there are waves of consolidation, you know, big companies scoop up little companies and then there’s lots of consolidation. You’ve got Symantec and Network Associates that way. And then you have “best of breed” where a lot of little companies spring up doing one thing well and then you cobble together a suite yourself. What we’re going to see is consolidation of non-security companies buying security companies. So, remember, if security is going to no longer be an end-user component, companies that do things that are actually useful are going to need to provide security. So, we’re seeing Microsoft buying security companies, we’re seeing IBM Global Services buy security companies, my company was purchased by BT, another massive global outsourcer. So, that sort of consolidation we are seeing, it’s not consolidation of security; it’s really the absorption of security into more general IT products and services.
EDITED TO ADD (8/19): Here’s something else I wrote about the general trend, from 2007.
Clive Robinson • August 19, 2010 11:00 AM
I suspect that we are seeing the normal Breadth after Depth cycle.
As a technology starts you see the initial players opening a new vertical niche within the broader scope of the technology.
As the niches drill down they appear to start running out of steam from an outsiders perspective.
The organisations thatt have obtained a larger market share start to see the same “slow down” so start to broaden out their activities either by internal development or by buying in. Historicaly it was internal (see IBM) in more modern times where companies buy in repackage and sell of organisational units it is faster to buy in.