THEFRIDAY INTERVIEW: David DeWalt, president/ chief executive of McAfee:THE CONFERENCE room at the Fota Island Hotel in Cork is strewn with camera and lighting equipment, hints of what is to follow after David DeWalt has finished this interview.
The preparations are almost complete for the president and chief executive of McAfee to make a live international webcast from Cork, which he says will showcase Ireland as a “strategic location” for the security software company.
“It’s not just a development centre or a QA [quality assurance] centre or a sales office. We’ve got almost every function in the company here,” he says.
DeWalt’s duties in Cork this week included formally opening the company’s sales operation for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. It was announced last year with the creation of 120 jobs, which have been filled ahead of schedule, bringing the number of McAfee staff in Cork to just over 300. “I have a lot of history on this site because my last three companies built operations here: Documentum, EMC and now McAfee. I’ve been very impressed with the engineering here, the attitude and the passion,” says DeWalt.
Cork competed against 11 other European sites and won, even though it was not the cheapest location. For DeWalt, the decision was about more than just cost.
“Another thing I’ve found from being here for the past 10 years is, the loyalty is tremendous. I never underestimate the power of that. It’s one of those intangibles that I think the Irish culture has.”
McAfee is considered by most industry analysts to be the world’s largest security software firm. Its market share is estimated to be between 7 per cent and 9 per cent of the total IT security market.
“There’s not a lot of markets out there where a company can add a billion dollars of base business and still have single-digit market share,” DeWalt says.
The growth in IT security risks has been good for business. “In the last three years we’ve seen an exponential increase in net malware [malicious software that can harm computers],” he says.
The increasing computing power of smartphones and laptops and the reach of technology into social networks also present growth opportunities for McAfee.
“Those elements of the perfect storm – much more devices, much more threats – create a scenario that keeps the company in a pretty good market,” says DeWalt.
It has not all been upward curves on McAfee’s graph, however. Last month the company released a flawed update for its anti-virus software that incorrectly labelled some Windows XP software as malicious and caused some PCs to stop working. McAfee acted quickly to rectify the mistake and DeWalt published a video blog apologising to customers, but the company took flak from customers and some competitors.
Even now, DeWalt strikes a suitably contrite tone, but says such “false positive” incidents are a fact of life in cyber security.
“We were racing to solve a particularly nasty piece of malware,” he says. “Our particular case was exacerbated because the bad thing that we were looking for – which was real – in some cases caused the computers not to be able to start.”
The growth in online crime and cyber-security threats is a big concern to DeWalt, who addressed last year’s World Economic Forum in Davos on the subject.
DeWalt says McAfee has seen evidence of concerted cyber attacks against companies and infrastructure. He uses this factor as a means to motivate his team to fight back against the worst the internet has to offer. “We have a noble cause here. When you come to work, you’re trying to do some good,” he says.
DeWalt has worked in the technology sector for almost 25 years. “I feel it some days,” he says – an aside that possibly recalls McAfee’s recent tribulations.
His career has covered staging posts in almost every part of a company’s development, from start-up to software giant. He tripled revenues as president and chief executive of Documentum, finishing with a sale to data storage company EMC. He has doubled McAfee’s revenues from $1 billion (€795 million) to $2 billion since joining in 2007.
Performance on the pitch and in the boardroom clearly matters to him. An accomplished sportsman during his days at the University of Delaware, DeWalt sets aggressive goals for himself and his teams.
“Athletics and business have a lot of parallels; they’re very tangential in ways. There are a lot of skills that I’ve transferred – how to be part of a team, how to lead a team. In many cases, how to read and manage people and understand them is the same on the playing field as in the business world.”
Mergers and acquisitions also feature heavily on DeWalt’s CV. McAfee itself is a target, and last month rumours resurfaced of a possible sale to HP. DeWalt’s two-part answer reveals both the inner competitor and the company man who has mastered the art of boxing clever with corporate-speak.
“You always build your company in a way that you can control your own destiny. We’ve done that by expanding the company’s size and doubling it, and our goal is to double it again,” he says.
“But we also have a duty of care and a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders to maximise shareholder value, and we look at every avenue it takes for that.”
McAfee typically gets through three or four deals a year to add to its tech armoury as new risks emerge. This could be Ireland’s opportunity, now that a cluster of companies has emerged in the IT security sector here, and DeWalt says he would be open to the possibility of deals. “I have some of my business development team looking at companies. The whole European market has become a mecca for development.”
That may also help to strengthen Cork’s case for further investment by the company.
“This location has become very strategic and, as a result, if there are acquisitions and opportunities that we can append on to that operation, it makes [things] much easier,” says DeWalt.
“We’re seeing start-ups and young companies coming around that are impressive, and it’s an opportunity to leverage and hopefully grow our operations here.”
On the Record
Name: David DeWalt.
Position:president and chief executive of McAfee.
Age:46.
Family:Married with three children.
L ives:San Francisco.
Hobbies:running, swimming, cycling, golf.
Something you might expect:
DeWalt spoke about global cyber-security threats at the 2009 World Economic Forum in Davos.
Something that might surprise:
He was the first wrestler to be inducted into the University of Delaware athletics hall of fame, having won several titles while studying there.
