On McAfee and Preventsys firesale

So, I am bit late, but blogger crashed killing my previous post on this so here it goes again.

Deal: McAfee acquires Preventsys Security Incite: Analysis on Information Security: "And clearly it doesn't mean anything to customers, since it's not like Preventsys was blowing the doors off of anything. Nor is anyone else in the SRM business. All of these SRM things seem like glorified reporting engines. "

I personally am happy to see Preventsys go [down the drain of a firesale]. Over the last 2-3 years I always brought them up as the example of a deeply confused company, which itself doesn't know what it is doing. Other terms that I've heard were "solution in search of a problem that doesn't exist", "in need of adult supervision" and (sorry!) "enterprise crapware."

Seriously, I looked at their website some time ago and I was also confused on what they actually do. So, I went and talked to their engineers at a conference and - wow! - they also were confused and couldn't explai neither the technology nor their ROI model. Hmmm! I went and did it in a year - with exactly the same result.

Now, I see McAfee using the pieces of their technology in various areas to bulk up Foundstone and other solutions they have. I hope I won't see them selling it as a whole, since, in this case, the "Confusion" spell will be cast onto McAfee itself :-)