When the chips are down, buy a software biz: Broadcom snaffles Symantec for $10.7bn

Broadcom has swallowed Symantec for a bargain-bin price of $10.7bn (£8.82bn) in cash, boosting the chip maker's enterprise security clout. Word of Broadcom's intentions first surfaced in early July as the firm sought to broaden its software portfolio. The deal looked good to go for $15.5bn until negotiations faltered when …

[Craig 2]

I wouldn't give $10 for Symantec, never mind $10bn. Bloody shysters.

[Captain Scarlet]

Most large companies only pay a few quid per machine, you may not want to give them any money but plenty of big enterprises will happy have their AV suite for cheap.

[Mage]

Ha!

How long before Broadcom simply dig a hole and bury Symantec? I can think of many better uses for $10.7!

[Mage]

Re: Ha!

Or even $10.7 billion.

[Tom 38]

I wonder which C-level at Symantec talked their shareholders out of $5 billion in value - what a genius. He/She will be a shoe-in for the next CEO job at HP.

[tip pc]

Good effort for pitching at 50% over its eventual sale price though. HP would have paid $100bn for it though and then quickly written it off at a loss once the cheque had been cashed

[luis river]

Not exactly, HP or HPE?, Last buyouts by HPE: CRAY and MapR by CEO Antonio Neri, there are autentic good bargains, not confuse Apotheker erratic HP CEO era with now time

[Anonymous Coward]

My reading was that Symantec wanted more but due diligence showed that it was in fact worth less and so Broadcom walked away.

I think Symantec C-level staff did the right thing (acting as cheer leaders for their company regardless of whether it is a pile of crap...).

And Broadcom did the right thing by looking under the covers and realizing all is not well.

And for the CEO role in HP, I don't believe their recruitment procedures require C-level staff to be able to tell their rear ends from their elbows let alone cover more complex issues such as acquisitions. The only real requirement is to collect their bonus each time they pass go^H^H^Hanother year.

[Anonymous Coward]

Shades of Intel buying McAfeee??

Becasue that worked so well.

[jelabarre59]

Re: Shades of Intel buying McAfeee??

Becasue that worked so well.

Even John McAffee had to make a (spoof) video about uninstalling McAffee Antivirus (warning, the video is NSFW).

[Korev]

Re: Shades of Intel buying McAfeee??

Ahhhh bath salts....

[Mpeler]

Re: Shades of Intel buying McAfeee??

Back it up,

Back it up...

Nothing like a good backup, eh, Paris?

[adam payne]

So is the name Symantec going into the dustbin?!?

If they wipe the name they might wipe the shame.

[Anonymous Coward]

"If they wipe the name they might wipe the shame."

Sometimes wiping cleans the mess and sometimes it just smears it over a wider area.

[Mark 85]

Judging from the corporate speak and bafflegab in the article spewing from Broadcom...there's a lot of cleansing needed.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why?

Can't think of a single product from Symantec which isn't already done better by Microsoft's security tools in the enterprise

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Why?

Trusting Microsoft to look after your security is like trusting Gary Glitter to look after your kids.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Why?

True. Using AV written by the same organization that wrote the mess that is Windows seems like it would leave a metalltic taste in your mouth, akin to a fragmentation grenade.

[Hans 1]

Re: Why?

What ? You're still using Windows ?

[Alan Bourke]

Re: Why?

Yeah. You know, a business to run, games to play when not running the business.

[ifekas]

A couple of years ago at work after purchasing SOPHOS UTMs, we started migrating our endpoint protection from Symantec to SOPHOS, but in the end we decided to stop this; we currently use both but find the overhead with Symantec significantly lower, and if anything we find Symantec EP the better product. Hopefully it will continue to do the job well.

[TM2015]

Seconded. I have 800 endpoints here running Symantec. Their overhead requirements in the enterprise level space remain very competitive and the management is acceptable enough. Wouldn't touch their Norton range though!

[joeldillon]

Sophos isn't an acronym, it doesn't need all caps. It's a transliteration of σοφός , ancient Greek for 'wise man'.

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft Defender + Malwarebytes is all she wrote.

[ocflyfish]

Unhappy Symantec user

We have a few hundred endpoints using SEP. I was becoming concerned when multiple vulnerabilities with SEP were discovered that put our systems at greater risk. The final straw for me was when I discovered two weeks ago that SEP had stopped functioning on more than 50% of our devices but didn't generate any warnings alerting us to the situation.

Taking a long hard look at Vipre when our licensing expires next year.