McAfee Associates, the ambitious anti-virus, network security and management company that failed in its bit to buy Cheyenne Software back in April, is now considering a bid for Seagate Technology Inc subsidiary Seagate Software Inc, according to our sister newsletter ClieNT Server News. The paper hears that Seagate’s heart remains in disk drives, and that it is looking either to spin-off or sell-off its software unit for a tidy profit. McAfee is said to have suggested to Seagate that an acquisition could be more lucrative than an initial public offering. Unlike Cheyenne, Seagate’s not averse to McAfee, which is one of its largest resellers, though the two compete directly in some market segments. Seagate Software is the result of a transatlantic buying binge involving ten separate companies, and consists of a Storage Management Group (Arcadia and Palindrome); a Network and Systems Management Group (NetLabs, Network Computing Inc, Frye Computer Systems, Creative Integration Technologies, OnDemand Software and Calypso Software Systems) and an Information Management Group (Crystal and Holistic). The disparate network and systems management products were recently hammered together by Seagate into its recently released Desktop Management Suite for Windows NT. It’s this and the NT backup storage products that McAfee apparently covets. Any McAfee dealings are now bolstered by its spiralling stock price, which has climbed from $27.50 last spring to $79 at one point last week. ClieNT Server News says that Seagate has so far only hinted at an asking price, but that those hints point to at least as much as the $1.2 bn Computer Associates is paying for Cheyenne.
