EMC RSA Pres Evaluates EMC-RSA Vs. Symantec-Veritas Mergers

EMC's RSA Security Division President Art Coviello sees a clear difference between the EMC"RSA merger versus the Symantec-Veritas union: EMC-RSA simply had the security assets to deliver upon the promise of bringing together security and storage, while Symantec simply did not.

"I won't talk too much about my competitor," said Coviello in an interview with CMP Channel. "I'd rather talk more about RSA and EMC. But the one thing I will point out is that at the time of the Veritas Symantec merger, (Symantec Chairman and CEO) John Thompson talked about a category called Assurance, combining information security with backup recovery and archiving. Not a bad premise. The problem is you can't do it with antivirus and the assets of Veritas. With EMC and RSA (you had products) protecting access to the data center, having strong user authentication, encryption technology. None of which Symantec had. RSA had all of those assets heading into the merger. So we were in a much better position to create this category of Assurance than Symantec ever was or quite frankly I think ever will be."

Coviello's comments come at a critical time for Symantec which last week restructured and added new leadership positions as part of move to improve the performance of both the Symantec and Veritas businesses. The restructuring puts in place the same operating unit model Veritas had before it was tightly integrated into Symantec.

Symantec's $10.25 billion acquisition of storage giant Veritas, completed nearly three years ago, stands as one of the largest deals in the technology industry in the last five years. Before the merger, Symantec had sales of $2.7 billion, while Veritas had sales of $1.75 billion.

In contrast, EMC's $2.1 billion acquisition of RSA, completed nearly two years ago, was a much smaller deal. EMC had about $10 billion in sales at the time of the deal, while RSA had only about $310 million in sales. That said, there was a big difference in the post merger tack taken by the two companies. EMC set RSA up as the security division of the storage giant and took a hands off approach. Symantec, meanwhile, moved quickly to tightly integrate the two behemoth organizations.

What's more, one time Veritas CEO Gary Bloom, who became vice chairman and president of Symantec following the deal, stepped aside only nine months after the union. Coviello remains the RSA boss and is looking forward to continuing to grow that business. RSA sales, in fact, have grown about 20 percent annually since the acquisition making the division a $500 million plus business for EMC.

"EMC has a philosophy in terms of their acquisitions which is in line with the Hippocratic oath: first do no harm," said Coviello. "So they did nothing to blunt our growth momentum. We planned it pretty well. I think the other thing quite frankly what I have loved about working with EMC is the lack of egos getting in the way. Having acquired a number of companies I knew how I wanted the CEO of the acquired company to behave. So I think we were a little bit more mature, myself and my management team, as we got acquired by EMC. And EMC understood and respected the talent we had and the subject matter expertise. So the ego thing has never been an issue."

Coviello said EMC-RSA is both a good strategic and cultural fit. "Security needs to be built into the infrastructure," he said. "We have got a number of proof points as we are building our technology into EMC's product portfolio. So the strategic rationale was there. Cultural compatibility was fantastic. Both companies are innovative, results oriented, hard driving. So cultural compatibility was great."

NEXT: The Channel Differences Between EMC- RSA Versus Symantec-Veritas