New suitor in Cisco mega acquisition rumor: McAfee

Despite Cisco CEO John Chambers telling investors that the company is not considering a mega acquisition at the moment, the bloggers at Inorganic Growth are not buying it and is tossing a new name in the acquisition rumor mill: McAfee.

According to Inorganic Growth: "Speculation has recently surfaced that the networking company is eyeing the largest IT security pure play, a combination that would allow Cisco – for the first time – to have control over endpoints. It would pick up a solid portfolio of security products from McAfee, notably encryption and port and device control offerings, as well as potentially salvaging Cisco’s disastrous NAC effort. (And as an added bonus with the deal, Cisco could stick it to Symantec. Cisco has little love for Symantec.)."

The blog also suggests that Cisco is putting so much emphasize on security that when the time comes for Chambers to step down, he will turn over the reins to Scott Weiss, former CEO of Cisco acquiree IronPort and now vice president and general manager of Cisco's Security Technology Group.

See also:
Where are the Cisco acquisitions?

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• John Chambers
• McAfee
• Scott Weiss
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