Network Associates Inc, the Santa Clara, California-based supplier of enterprise network security and management software, has announced a third-quarter net loss of $241,000, compared with a loss of $14.4m for the same period last year, on revenues of $195.2m, compared with $242.4m for the same period last year. Obviously we’re extremely pleased with our results this quarter, said president, chairman and CEO Bill Larson, who attributed his company’s improvement to a combination of factors. Not least was customer counseling to smooth out issues associated with the 8 to 10 acquisitions NAI has made in the last year. The company was originally cobbled together in 1997 from the remains of McAfee Associates Inc, Network General Co and PGP Inc, and has since grown by aggressive purchasing. While acknowledging that there have been bumps in customer relationships Larson insists that NAI’s turnaround story has begun.
Highlights of he quarter include an alliance with Sun Microsystems Inc, Frontier Communications Corp and the Hewlett- Packard Co to introduce the WebShield E-ppliance, an anti-virus, firewall and VPN server in a box. The company’s PGP encryption, authentication and VPN software business was buoyed by the US government’s decision to relax encryption export controls. Cisco Systems Inc made NAI a charter member of its Security Associate Program. The Federal Energy Regulation Commission and the Gas Industry Standards Board named PGP as their required security standard. NAI Labs won two intrusion detection contracts for the US Department of Defense’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). New technology launches have included Virulogic, Sniffer Enterprise Resource Planning management and the Magic Help Desk. Larson told analysts he hopes for a strong fourth quarter, assuming the impact of the Y2K problem doesn’t bring down Western Civilization. Even if the next quarter is not so good as this one, he notes, NAI’s long terms prospects are good. E-commerce is on the rise, and: security is the plumbing in the e-commerce house, he concluded.
