CA antivirus unit sold: Will become 'Total Defense'
VCs fixin' to sharpen up the toolset
Posted in Management, 17th May 2011 11:14 GMT
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CA has sold its antivirus division to venture capital firm Updata Partners.
Updata plans to form a new firm, provisionally called Total Defense, Inc, once the deal closes in June.
Around 60,000 businesses worldwide rely on antivirus technologies from CA's Internet Security Business Unit, the division of the firm that is being sold.
CA will retain its enterprise-focused identity and access management software business, a line of products that fits more closely with its core systems management market. Financial terms of the deal, announced late last week, were not disclosed.
The move following disappointing financial results from the system management firm, which has been a premier league player in the anti-malware market for 10 years without ever managing to knock any of the big four off their perch.
CA Q4 sales rose by five per cent to $1.13bn, falling below analyst predictions of $1.17bn. Shares in the firm fell nine per cent as a result, Bloomberg reports.
CA's anti-malware technology has endured a mediocre performance in independent technical tests of late, but new management and a sharper focus could easily turn this around.
CA Internet Security Suite 2011 failed to receive certification in independent quarterly tests performed by AV-Test.org, for example. CA's entries also performed meekly in recent Virus Bulletin tests. ®
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COMMENTS
It's not never good.
It's not very good. Last time I spoke to a CA vendor they were virtually trying to give the thing away.
It's a shame really, because when CA acquired VET they got a very well regarded AV team. But as with a lot of products, CA just milk it for profits and eventually spoil it.
CA bought ingres
then the beancounters sacked all of the highly paid "consultants" pretty much on the day of takeover! Only when customers atarted asking for consultancy hours that were included in the support contact did CA realise it had sacked business critical staff.
After physically forcing the staff out of the buildings, they then had to turn around and "BEG" them to come back. Of course, most of them had contacts with the customers who hired them directly at half the CA rates and paid thier salary using the penalties CA had to pay for thier inability to provide qualified consultancy services :-)
Muppets - I will never forgive them for buying Sygate then destroy thier product. SPF was a neat product. but CA bought it to remove the competition.
Tell the CA fat lady....
She is on in 5.
I can see CA circling the drain.
Given their now crap reputation, and various security breaches in the last year.
The entire management team at CA needs to be put up against the wall and shot.
Only then will CA stand a chance of actually surviving
|"Mediocre performance can easily be turned around". Really?
"CA's anti-malware technology has endured a mediocre performance in independent technical tests of late, but new management and a sharper focus could easily turn this around."
If it was that easy, the AV/AM tech market should be flooded with top-performing security software.
- Paris, for she endures her mediocre performance in every single test so far.
CA Anti-virus = shit
We've got a customer who runs CA Anti-Virus on 15-20 computers at their lumber yard. It's sad that Microsoft Security Essentials works better than CA's product.
Hopefully this news will allow us to move them to something where they aren't calling us once a week to remove malware from their computers. Although, that'd kinda put me out of a job......
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