Symantec CEO Sounds Off On Veritas Integration, Security/Storage Synergy

Symantec CEO John Thompson recently spoke with Senior Editor Kevin McLaughlin regarding channel concerns about the integration of Symantec and Veritas following the June 2005 merger, among other issues. Here is an edited version of their conversation.

CRN: Where are you in the process of combining the security and storage product lines, from a business as well as a technical standpoint?

Thompson: We have made great progress to date. First, we took the notion of looking at products that logically have leverage together in the marketplace. [We] took Backup Exec, [a] very important Windows product, and in the channel married it with LiveState Recovery from the Symantec portfolio. The combination of these two has been an instance of the benefits of putting the two together. That's a marketing bundle for the channel, and the channel is important in making that happen.

Jeremy Burton now has all Windows-based apps for backup, and mail and messaging apps, and that business unit has a great sense of where we will deliver longer term.

When you do something as significant as this, I think of it as an evolving work in progress. So far, Symantec has completed the integration of the human resources and benefits systems and finished uniting the two companies' e-mail infrastructure. All engineering teams have been realigned in the business units, and we are in the process right now of executing a sales reorganization model-"it's more about reducing the number of accounts for some of our high-end relationship managers and providing better coverage for the marketplace.

Much of the IT infrastructure has been converted-"the big issue to be done in IT relates to our ERP systems-"we have a thought-out plan in place that has changes that will be implemented right after the close of reporting for FY06.

CRN: Is Symantec Vision still about Veritas products?

Thompson: The event will go into the reality of what we're about. We're a company about protecting customers' important infrastructure components and protecting the information that is valuable and protecting the increasingly important interactions that go on between users. Veritas' strength was in the protection of data from backup recovery, Symantec has been about protection against risks of viruses and hackers. The evolution over the last nine months allows us to think more holistically about what we as a team can do.

CRN: What evidence are you seeing that customers are looking for integrated security/storage solutions and how does that compete against the integrated security/networking story that Cisco pushes? Thompson: I don't think it would be appropriate to suggest that any one company can solve all security and availability problems that customers have. It's true that in order to help customers protect their data you have to move security technology and capacity closer to the data itself.

If you sit on the end point, PC or Treo, you are not close enough to the data. If you sit on the network, you see the data as it's crossing, but not as it's sorted for use in business-critical applications. That's where our advantage is, we can see the data crossing the network and have opportunity to touch the data when it's at rest or when it's being used as part of the application.

When you think about the new Symantec, you think about a company that does more to protect users from more online threats than anyone else. Those online threats will increasingly be targeted at data in use and data at rest. Having the Veritas Backup portfolio and our security products puts us in a unique position.

CRN: Many security solution providers I've spoken with have mentioned they prefer using an approach of multiple interlocking vendors, as opposed to a single monolithic vendor. Some have even said it looks like Symantec is going in 29 different directions at once, taking an oceanwide/puddle-deep approach. Do you feel these partners could be part of the synergy strategy and how can Symantec address their concerns?

Thompson: I don't think any of us understood that the threat landscape would look like it does now just two to three years ago. No one thought data breach and exposure that we are seeing today would be probable or likely. Our partners have understood where the threat landscape is going, and why [a] holistic [approach] is good and meaningful. Those who view the problem as we have, have seen the benefits of partnering more deeply with us. The onus is on us to articulate to partners better about where the value is in this approach.

A few years ago we introduced our first integrated security appliance, and the market and partners said no one will ever buy this. Today, the fastest-growing segment is UTM because everyone recognizes you have to integrate multiple technologies at the gateway tier to mitigate threats. The same is true of marrying security and storage--you have to protect data, and doing it in a simplistic form is not going to be sufficient.