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Intel's Software Chief Out; Botched McAfee Deal To Blame?
jfruh writes: Renee James, Intel's president and head of the company's software group has departed, supposedly to "pursue other opportunities." But a high-profile heir apparent doesn't just leave voluntarily, and it seems likely that she is in part taking the fall for Intel's acquisition of McAfee, the promised synergies of which have failed to materialize. Intel is a traditionally very stable company, but there's been a lot of churn in the upper ranks lately.
How to uninstall McAfee
Fuck McAfee Mod +5 Insightful because you know it is.
No, I won't. And no I don't.
It's two words that give no illumination on the subject. How do you suppose that enlightens anyone? Hint: your sexual preferences aren't interesting.
How about:-
I have no idea what the purchase price was for McAfee, or what it's existing revenue stream was/is - but I have to wonder whether the people that made the decision truly consider it's effect on Intel's image, and whether they costed a plan to turn around the scumbag image McAfee has. ?
What? This is the Chinese antivirus vendor that was caught cheating in antivirus tests not long ago.
In China, local antivirus software vendors have a reputation of being shady, often bundling questionable software and forcibly removing their competitors' software (imagine that!). I heard the "international" versions are less aggressive, but personally I still wouldn't let any of them near any of my computers. This is the first time I heard someone outside China using those.
I can never understand why people use or even buy antivirus software from not-so-trustworthy vendors when Microsoft offers one for free that is fast and effective.
Intel paid $7.68 billion for McAfee. While their consumer products are notoriously crappy they do actually have some cred for their business software. Most of their business is providing services to companies such as email archival, spam protection and anti-virus. Software as a Service as they call it, or running an external mail server as the rest of us would say. They make high end encryption products too, that have all the various certifications needed for government work.
It's still not really clear what Intel hoped to gain by buying McAfee... Did they want in to those markets, or were they hoping to add new security features to their CPUs?
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
The reality is that James never fit in as Intel's president, and they are likely better off with her being gone.
Intel was and still is a hardware company first and foremost. The world's leading foundry and pretty good chip designers too. However James came from the side of Intel that handled software and services; she was a software person through and through. And while I disagree with TFA that the McAfee acquisition was a complete folly - it was a good fit for Intel's computer management technology development - it doesn't change the fact that it's but a small part of what Intel does.
Promoting someone likes James to such a high position in the company, overseeing both hardware and software, was a mistake. James was out of her element, and while she didn't do anything fatal, she lacked the background necessary to lead a hardware company like Intel. She would be better off at an Oracle or HP-like company, where software and services are a greater focus and her skills would be more applicable.