Network Associates Names New President

Network Associates Inc. on Monday continued its year-long overhaul of its executive ranks, naming Gene Hodges its new president.

Hodges, who had been running the companys McAfee division, takes on a role that has been essentially vacant since Peter Watkins resigned last year. CEO George Samenuk had held the title of president in the interim.

Also on Monday, Network Associates named Art Matin to replace Hodges as president of McAfee and announced that CFO Steve Richards role will expand to include the duties of chief operating officer.

Hodges has been with NAI since 1995 and oversaw the development and production of several of the companys key products, including its e-Policy Orchestrator and line of security appliances.

Matin, a longtime IBM Corp. veteran, was most recently vice president of worldwide sales and marketing at Cross Worlds Software Inc., a provider of business-integration software and services.

Hodges will be directly responsible for Network Associates overall product roadmap and technology direction, while Samenuk will continue focus on customer and shareholder relations.

“This is a fabulous time for Network Associates,” Hodges said during a Monday morning conference call. “Our customers are buying security products like no other time in history. Our products are superior today and we will improve them.”

The company is also moving ahead with the divestiture of its PGP line, Samenuk said, and has had one offer to buy the PGP desktop encryption product and hopes to finalize a sale in January. He added that he spoke with a large firewall company about a potential partnership during a trip to Europe last week . NAI recently discontinued its line of corporate firewalls.

The promotion of Hodges is the latest in a series of personnel moves at the top of NAI which began with the resignation last December of Watkins and then-CEO Bill Larson. Samenuk in January took over the CEO position and has been reshaping the face of the executive team and the company ever since.

During his tenure, Samenuk has dissolved both the myCIO.com division and the PGP divisions and pared the Santa Clara, Calif., companys extensive product line.