Q&A With Symantec's Enrique Salem

Symantec Corp. CEO Enrique Salem took the reins from John Thompson in April after Thompson's retirement. In an interview with CRN editors, Salem gives his thoughts on numerous issues affecting the future of the world's largest security company, ranging from the federal economic stimulus package to midmarket products to communication in the channel. Here are excerpts from that conversation:

CRN: What are some of the biggest issues you face going into the role of CEO that might not have been issues for your predecessor?

SALEM: From a partner perspective, the CEO has got to work with partners and customers to make it easier to do business with Symantec. We've made progress, but there's still more work to do. Simplify licensing; that will be a big benefit to our partners. Hopefully what they'll see are lots of improvements. And partners will become an increasingly important part of our business.

CRN: In your last earnings call, storage comprised a significantly larger proportion of Symantec's business than security. Do you see that trend continuing in 2009?

SALEM: We had a very good quarter with storage. [Storage products such as Enterprise Vault are] a nice tailwind to our storage business, and storage demands are continuing. But there are some exciting things in our security portfolio. Partners are very interested in what we're doing in DLP. I can tell you we'll have higher growth in security than we've had in the last 12 months. That doesn't mean storage drops off; it just means security picks up.

CRN: How will the economic stimulus package affect the company?

SALEM: The stimulus package is going to be helpful in a couple of ways. Definitely the stimulus package should help in the health-care vertical. Also, it's all about what's happening with the cybersecurity initiatives. This is really where we're pretty uniquely positioned. We do see a lot of opportunity around security in the federal government.

CRN: Communication with partners has been an issue in the past. What is Symantec doing to address that problem?

SALEM: If you look at the number of partners I've interacted with [recently], I ask them: What are the priorities? How should they engage with their field? They would tell you product quality. It sounds like they feel pretty good about the product portfolio and some of the tools we've put out. At the end of the day, I think we're making some great progress out there. I'll be a little disappointed if, as we look at the [Everything Channel Annual Report Card results], we don't do a lot better than we did last year. This year we'll do better. It's a priority—how do we help our channel be successful?

CRN: What is Symantec doing to help partners overcome challenges?

SALEM: The economy is not that robust, but if we can go to them with clear product strategies, things that customers want to buy, then they don't waste their time. We've got a campaign called 'Stop Buying Storage.' From our perspective, if customers want clear ROI, then that's what Symantec needs to help them achieve it. This campaign uses our technologies to deliver software to help customers be more efficient with storage utilization. Use our software and in four months, get a payback. That's the single biggest initiative that's highly relevant to customers in the marketplace. They've got to believe there's a real ROI. Long ROI, 18-month ROI, those just aren't cutting it. That's not how business is closed right now.

Enrique Salem will be delivering a keynote address at CRN parent Everything Channel's VAR500 event in New York on June 2. For more information, contact Managing Director of Events Bill Jones at bjones@everythingchannel.com