“The McAfee name will give us a better brand recall”

With the recent change in its name from Network Associates to McAfee, the company is looking at reaping the benefits of a renewed brand strategy. Ashley Wearne, area vice president for Australia, New Zealand, South-east Asia & India, spoke to CHITRA PADMANABHAN on the company’s plans to align its marketing efforts with its branding initiatives

* First things first. How did the name change come about?

In the past, the name Network Associates was associated with a host of products. However, we found that there was a higher association with the McAfee brand name and our security products. We have adopted a two-pronged strategy of streamlining the business by focusing solely on security products and services, along with a renewed brand strategy. As far as the name change goes, it will be fully effective after the sale of the Sniffer product line to Silver Lake Partners and Texas Pacific is completed. The acquirers intend to form a stand-alone entity named Network General Corporation, which will continue to develop, support, sell and market Sniffer products. We felt that the name McAfee will give us a better brand recall to effectively market our security solutions. This transaction falls in line with the company’s current strategy to project itself as a pure-play security player.

* What are your plans for the Indian market?

We are in the process of announcing a cost reduction and profitability plan, which has been under development for several months and is designed to deliver a 25 percent operating margin by mid-2005. The benefit of the renewed brand strategy through the recent name change is likely to spill over into the Indian market in a big way, and act as a catalyst for further growth. The new McAfee (which sells enterprise anti-virus and intrusion prevention security solutions), the McAfee labs research organisation and the consumer security business, have projected a healthy worldwide growth in revenue of 11 percent year-on-year. In the next few years we see India emerging as a much bigger market contributing significantly to our global revenues.

* Can you elaborate on the positioning of the new McAfee?

McAfee will leverage its brand recognition to form strategic partnerships with service providers as well as the growing consumer and SME markets where brand recognition is an important element in purchase decisions. Over the last several months, simplification of several pricing structures and business operations have given the company better penetration into SME markets.

* How does the concept of proactive security fit into your strategy?

With the introduction of new products we intend to spread the concept of proactive security, and have designed our products in a way that would bring about a change in a company’s approach to security. For instance, we have recently launched McAfee IntruShield 2.1, which is based on IPS (Intrusion Prevention System) technology that not only offers network-based encrypted threat protection but also has an integrated firewall. The technology provides for decryption and inspection of SSL-encrypted traffic, while maintaining the integrity of the encrypted data and encryption keys.

Our second product, McAfee Entercept 5.0, is a host IPS solution which acts as an added layer between the system and the network. This is a next-generation host IPS solution offering the highest levels of zero-day attack protection with the ability

to scale across the enterprise. Additionally, this product offers a unique and powerful blend of signatures and innovative buffer overflow protection technologies to defend against zero-day attacks that dramatically reduce the urgency of software patch deployments. Today, McAfee is all set to position itself as a company offering desktop and server level security solutions in a single integrated solution.