Symantec's Salem Urges VARs To Drive More Value, Quicker ROI

IT threats are growing at an increasingly alarming rate, but customers still need more security, leading them to want more ROI while spending less in this economy, Salem told a crowd of solution providers at this year's VAR500 conference in New York.

Enrique Salem At The VAR500 Conference

Symantec -- and its partners -- need to get it done, Salem said. "If you walk in and say, 'We'll get you ROI in 2 years,' that's not going to get it done," Salem said. "Symantec plans to help solution providers drive more value from things they've already purchased."

Salem admitted that Symantec has been guilty of "shiny-new-toy syndrome," in which the company focuses on its latest acquisition -- until the next one comes along. And with 30 acquisitions over the past 10 years, that's a lot of shiny new toys.

"We've bought a lot of companies, and we've been doing that instead of figuring out how to integrate companies together to create more value to our customers," Salem said. "My priorities are, 'Let's take those acquisitions and bring them together in a more meaningful way to reduce the complexities that our customers have to deal with.' I can't leave a discussion with a CIO without him saying, 'I'm tired of point products.'"

For example, Symantec is working to integrate backup and archiving solutions into one simple architecture with common policies, Salem said. "It's not just backup or archiving. It has to be both together," he said.

Salem pledged to make sure that Symantec's products are ready for prime time at the time they are released, a complaint he's heard from solution providers.

"Our initial releases need to be better. We've got a very aggressive campaign focused on initial quality of what we deliver. We call it the First 24. We have a maniacal focus on this. My team's compensation is tied to how we do on this. Hopefully that drives appropriate behavior [from Symantec]."

Symantec now runs its top 10 products internally before they are shipped to customers, Salem said. "Our Altiris Client Management suite just shipped. It was on 8,000 machines at Symantec before it went out the door. My commitment to you is that we will put products in our environment before they go out to you. That should improve quality of the solution in the marketplace."

Salem also told the VAR500 crowd that the percentage of Symantec's revenue that is generated by the channel will continue to increase in the future.

"Why am I so confident in that? Because we keep bringing new products to the marketplace. We have 4,500 salespeople today working with the channel. We can't sell everything we've got. I'm committed to you becoming an increasing part of our overall business," Salem said.

Salem encouraged solution providers to develop and market their unique intellectual property to take to customers.

"That's the thing beyond any vendor's product. I want to make sure we're focusing our time to enable you to build some technology that allows you to replicate that at each account," he said.