Where Symantec purchased, McAfee will partner. Having watched its major security competitor get bogged down with a storage acquisition, McAfee has opted for a low-risk partnership to tie its security products with storage. The largest stand-alone security vendor said Tuesday that it has struck an alliance with data management software provider CommVault. The initial integrated product, which will put CommVault’s storage resource management tool into McAfee’s ePolicy Orchestrator console, will be available next year.
With modest integration and no bundled products planned, we would characterize McAfee’s loose partnership with CommVault as ‘Symantec-Veritas lite.’ And the two sides have reason to be cautious, given the struggles Symantec has had with its $13.5bn purchase of Veritas. (Although he continues to back the deal, Symantec CEO John Thompson has said the market considers the combination a ‘purple elephant’ and is uncertain of how to value it.) Since the transaction was announced in December 2004, Symantec shares have lost about half of their value, compared to a 20% decline in the Nasdaq and a slight 5% dip in McAfee stock.