Symantec: Still In Security?

The question is: Can Symantec wait that long? "A bloated memory hog that breaks more applications than it protects" is how some solution providers and end users describe the current version of Symantec Antivirus Corporate Edition. "It's a resource hog, and I'm telling my clients not to use it—to replace it with something else," one VAR says. "Customers are always complaining about slow computers."

Both Trend Micro and McAfee report taking customers and solution providers away from Symantec. They attribute their gains to a combination of problems, not the least of which is the performance of Symantec's products. Symantec's recent migration to a new ERP system has made doing business with the vendor difficult. The quality of technical support has ebbed, some say. And its focus on storage products has some solution providers wondering if the security side of the house is even a priority anymore.

While Symantec has slipped in the antivirus realm, Trend Micro is seeing competitive displacement among large customers, tremendous opportunity among midsize companies and open-field prospects in the small-business market.

"The growth of [Symantec's] organization is displacing what the customers need," says Dave Dickison, senior vice president of North America channels at McAfee. "The partners don't have as much loyalty as they once had."

While Parrish doesn't deny that competitors are capitalizing on Symantec's pain, she won't provide specifics as to whether there are losses. "We're not seeing any changes to our overall order flow, but we have heard about some partners switching orders," she says. "It's hard to know if the switch is permanent or whether they've switched and will come back."

Symantec is mum on how it plans to improve Symantec Antivirus Corporate Edition, but both McAfee and Trend Micro have been vocal about their product road maps. McAfee plans to integrate its series of acquisitions into one risk-management suite. As Dickison explains, ePolicy Orchestrator will be the umbrella under which Foundstone's vulnerability management application, Citadel's patch management software, Onigma's data loss prevention and IntruVert intrusion prevention technology will holistically reside.

Trend Micro added reputational analysis technology acquired from Kalkea to the latest version of OfficeScan, which will identify and block hostile Web sites before they infect a client with malware.

Parrish, a former Veritas executive, doesn't deny there are problems, rattling off a laundry list of them—order processing, license key activations, support quality—that are being fixed. But she knows that Symantec must do a better job of communicating with solution providers.

What is Symantec doing about technology problems in its primary antivirus engine? Brian Fuller, the company's director of endpoint security, says the next version of Symantec AV engine will feature compressed signatures that significantly decrease host performance hits. Users will be able to slow the scanning process, which will decrease processing demands but extend malware inspection times.

But the summer's still a long way off, and there are still scores of issues to address. Solution providers can only hope that the yellow-clad vendor wakes up and starts talking about what it's going to do for them and their customers.