McAfee bets the farm on ePolicy Orchestrator

McAfee is making a bold move with its campaign for ePO

McAfee made one thing clear at its FOCUS 09 conference: ePolicy Orchestrator (ePO) is the focal point of its enterprise security plans.

The company said in no uncertain terms that the management system would be central to an enterprise strategy that includes McAfee's own products, as well as those of more than 100 partners developing products that interlock with ePO.

McAfee chief executive Dave DeWalt likened the programme to satellites orbiting a stellar body. Ideally, McAfee sees businesses running ePO as an 'IT command centre', with additional components from McAfee and partner vendors filling other specific needs with applications that operate within, or link to, ePO.

To further aid compatibility with ePO, the company has run a programme for the past two years known as the Security Innovation Alliance in which third-party vendors are offered an application programming interface to make their software compatible with ePO.

Unlike other enterprise platform vendors such as Salesforce.com, McAfee does not appear to have plans to invest in startups seeking to develop interlocking tools.

Gerhard Watzinger, strategy and business development executive vice president at the firm, told V3.co.uk that the company had no plans to form an 'incubator' programme to seed developers, opting instead for acquisitions and partnerships with established firms.

This strategy of reaching out to vendors to expand ePO is in contrast to the plans of rival firms such as Symantec and Trend Micro, which have chosen to expand their enterprise security lines and add features and services under their own brands.

Limiting the focus of its development would at first glance appear to hamper the growth of ePO, but the strategy could have a very positive effect if successful.

McAfee is hoping that smaller, more specialised, developers who have spent years crafting and refining their products will see ePO as a way to expand their market and compatibility, giving ePO a collection of 'best-of-breed' components to offer customers.

The analysts who spoke to V3.co.uk largely held a favourable view of McAfee's strategy, but one question that did arise was stability.

With the possibility for so many different developers and applications, businesses could find that compatibility and performance becomes a concern, particularly in an area as essential as enterprise security.

There are now more than 80 vendors in McAfee's Security Innovation Alliance. With that many products involved, stability issues and security flaws are nearly inevitable, and ePO's reputation could take a hit should such issues linger or go unpatched.

Given the possible risks and rewards for the move, it is hard to deny that McAfee is making a bold statement with its ongoing campaign for ePO. The decision has certainly separated the company from its rivals, and should, for better or for worse, have a major impact on the future of McAfee as an enterprise security vendor.