As I walked into the opening keynote of the HP Americas Partner Conference last week, I got an alert on my Blackberry: HP was rumored to be buying security powerhouse McAfee. I immediately flashed the headline to a couple of people in the crowd and shared a quick laugh before the lights dimmed. Little did we know that within 24 hours, the real news would be HP’s acquisition of Palm for $1.4 billion (£0.92m).
The HP-McAfee acquisition is one of my favouritl myths in the security market; it ranks right up there with unicorns and leprechauns. This deal is a perennial rumour that surfaces whenever HP is running high or McAfee has a slip. Stories of such a marriage are driven by Wall Street speculators who wish to tap the rich commissions that come with a multi-billion-dollar stock swap. The last time I wrote about HP-McAfee was February, when weeks of background chatter surfaced in financial analyst notes. Then, like now, the chatter proved to be – as Shakespeare would say – nothing more than sound and fury signifying nothing.
Don’t get me wrong, HP buying McAfee would be a powerhouse deal that would finally give HP the security muscle it needs to compete against the likes of Cisco, Dell, IBM and Acer. Of the tech titans, HP has the weakest in-house security portfolio; even with the acquisition of 3Com’s TippingPoint intrusion prevention systems (in a deal finally approved last month) and the development of its own ProCurve-based firewalls, HP’s security proposition is anaemic at best.
But the deal doesn’t make sense – at least at this time – for a few reasons.
OK, so here’s the escape clause: As former NetApp CEO Dan Wormenhoven once told me, every company has a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders to entertain a legitimate offer [And every CEO in the world says the same thing – UK Editor]. As the old saying goes, everyone has a price.
So is it inconceivable that HP would buy McAfee? No, absolutely not. But after years of watching this dance and hearing the same old song, it’s best to let the rumour mill churn and only get excited when real chatter rises to the surface – if it ever does.
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