Symantec Corp is not about to cede the anti-virus software market to Network Associates Inc and after buying IBM Corp technology back in May, it yesterday paid in the region of $18m for parts of Intel Corp’s LanDesk Virus Protect business, including a new version of the software Intel has been working on for a year. Symantec will integrate its well-known Norton anti-virus software with the new version of Virus Protect and combine the resulting product with the chip giant’s LanDesk systems manag ement suite. Symantec will begin selling the new Virus Protect release by year-end (it’s at version 5.0 now). Both companies will ship the combined product from next year as the upgrade path for Intel’s 18,000 Virus Protect customers as well as the Norton installed base. Moreover, Intel will ship the client portion of the software with future versions of its LanDesk Management suite, providing Symantec a direct route to millions of desktops. Intel estimates 15 million PCs have shipped with its LanDesk client manager software and claims to hold 7% of the corporate anti-virus market. Intel says its software acts as preventative anti-virus medicine for corporate networks rather than as a detection or cleaning mechanism. Symantec has bought the discreet Virus Protect products and licensed other relevant LanDesk systems management pieces, including Intel’s alert and event-tracking mechanisms. In addition to the 18,000 Virus Protect customers Intel has attracted in the seven years it’s bee n selling the product, Symantec gets its hands Intel’s reseller channel; it’s especially interested in the international opportunity, as Intel does 40% of its server security sales overseas. Symantec says customers won’t need to be locked into Intel’s LanDesk systems management environment; it has other deals to integrate its work with Platinum Technology and Tivoli software. The acquisition is part of Symantec’s three-pronged strategy to extend operating system functionality in the corporate a nd consumer space in the areas of remote connectivity, internet application development and security. For Intel, the deal means it is able to offload the cost of developing anti-virus software but at the same time increase the momentum for the systems management technologies which are becoming an increasingly important part of its business. Intel has already outsourced development of key LanDesk configuration management software for managing Intel desktops to Platinum Technology Inc. Intel will resell a new configuration manager application for LanDesk complete with Platinum’s software. Symantec says it’ll also use Intel’s systems management technology to help build the Digital Immune System being created by IBM on top of its neural network technology.
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