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Network Associates may set up India office

"We are looking at the Indian market and talking to resellers and customers, deciding whether or not to set up an India office. We will probe and assess the market here a little more before we decide," said James LaLonde, director, Asia-Pacific, Network Associates. Either way, a decision will be

T O D A Y

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taken by mid-1998.

Network Associates was formed in December with the merger of the anti-virus software company McAfee Inc, network performance monitoring company Network General, network security company PGP Inc and utilities software company Helix.

The combined turnover of the four companies is more than $612 million. Network Associates is the tenth largest independent software company and the largest third-party software provider for Microsoft/Intel based PCs and servers.

It is also the largest independent network security and management software company. LaLonde said Wipro, which has been the exclusive distributor in India for McAfee products, would now market the entire product line of Network Associates.

He said talks would be held with Wipro to see if the latter would market the product range in neighbouring markets such as Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

The Madras based Ramco Systems, which has been distributing Network General products will continue to distribute those products, he said.

LaLonde said the individual brand names of the products would be retained despite the merger of the four companies.

India and China are the focus areas for this year for Network Associates, he said. An area of interest for the company is taking over local anti-virus software companies in the countries it operates in. This will be considered in India too, LaLonde said.

One of the more recent product launches of the company is Web ScanX, which blocks known hostile, ActiveX and Java applets while letting useful ones continue to operate.

With this, and the other products, it is expected that the company will double its revenues in India this year.

- Compiled from the Indian media

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