SonicWall's CEO this week opened up on the issues its brief ownership by Dell caused partners. But it's not the only example of an acquisition volte-face by a large vendor causing pain for the channel
4) Intel and McAfee
Intel's time in charge of McAfee was hardly a disaster, but partners felt the brand lost coherence under the chip giant's direction.
Intel acquired McAfee in 2010 for $7.7bn with a grand vision of embedding its security functionality in its chips.
It ultimately failed to pull this off, renaming the business as Intel Security but running it as a standalone arm. After months of speculation that Intel wanted out, the manufacturer announced in September that it had agreed to sell a 51 per cent stake in the business - which has now reassumed the McAfee name - to private equity house TPG.
"They've fractured the old McAfee story in a bad way for both resellers and customers" - David Lannin, Sapphire
Intel's six-year stab at being a security vendor is an episode many of its partners would prefer to forget.
"Let's face it, they have had the technology for a few years and have done no integration into the rest of the Intel equipment," David Lannin, director of technology at Intel Security Gold partner Sapphire, said at the time rumours of a sell-off first emerged.
"If anything, they've fractured the old McAfee story in a bad way for both resellers and customers. They have sold off parts of it and it has become less coherent and has not lived up to their promises when they acquired the company."
TPG paid Intel $3.1bn in cash for a majority stake in the business, meaning buying McAfee was bad business for Intel as well as its partners.
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