25 Scenes From Symantec Vision 2010

Welcome To Symantec Vision 2010

Cheers from Symantec Vision 2010, held April 12-15 at MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nev. For four days, Symantec executives laid out company plans and talked strategy, excited partners with humor-infused motivation, and kept their eye squarely on the company's future. Meanwhile, Symantec CEO Enrique Salem celebrated his one-year anniversary as CEO, while outlining the company's "vision" to 2,500 channel partners, engineers, and employees. What's next for Symantec? For the most part, the company plans to continue its trajectory of endpoint security and storage offerings. But there are some changes coming down the pike. Here are a few fun, and informative, scenes from the event.

Symantec Vice President of Product Marketing Steve Morton makes his grand entrance Vegas-style as master of ceremonies of the Symantec Vision opening keynote (That is to say, with two Vegas cabaret show girls on his arm.) In keeping with his promise that there would be no PowerPoint presentations, Morton took a page from the Late Night Show, and played "show host" as he paraded myriad executives from Symantec, as well as Intel, Dell and HP onto the stage, to illustrate the company's product, services, cloud and integration strategy going forward.

Kicking off Symantec Vision 2010 as Master of Ceremonies, Symantec Vice President of Product Marketing Steve Morton reinforced the conference theme of "taking control" to his audience of 2,500 during the "talk show" keynote format. Morton also promised that they would not see one PowerPoint presentation or boring executive standing up a podium. (There was actually one PowerPoint presentation)

Take It Away

In the same vein as David Letterman's CBS Orchestra, Jeff Hanson and the Blue Stone Circle Band support MC Steve Morton with some lively tunes on the stage, while coming in with some well-timed symbol crashes after the all of Morton's jokes, during the opening keynote of Symantec Vision.

He Has A Vision

Steve Morton, Symantec vice president of product marketing, banters with Symantec CEO Enrique as he highlights the company's long term goals during Symantec Vision opening keynote. Among its many plans, Symantec is launching four new security suites, which align with Symantec's stated goals of further integrating and consolidating technology. The company also plans to add more security functions to its Symantec Hosted Services, and is slated to launch a mobile Web reputation technology in the next one to two years. Why? Scheduled releases are part of a larger company goal of addressing emerging targeted threats and simplifying end user's IT infrastructure, Salem said.

Enrique On Hydraq

During the talk-show format, Symantec CEO Enrique Salem discussed the inexorable march toward the consolidation and consumerization of IT. He pointed to the Hydraq attack, the malware that infiltrated the IP database of Google and more than 30 other major companies, was a clear forerunner of the impending attacks that lie ahead. Meanwhile, attackers will have access to an even bigger and richer target base than before, with 1 billion PCs and 1.5 billion smartphones anticipated to be used on the market by the end of the year, he added. To combat the slew of emerging threats, Symantec will be releasing reputation-based and more virtualization technologies while further consolidating a wide array of correlating point products into suites, so customers "can spend more time running your business and less time having to worry about running IT," he said.

Clouds Can't Be Contained

Steve Morton, Symantec vice president of product marketing, and Mary Ann Mezzapelle, chief technologist of security services for HP, rely on the help of two roadies to help them illustrate the concept of "The Cloud," and Symantec's cloud strategy, during the Vision 2010 opening keynote. (Apparently the cloud can't be kept in a box, much to Morton's chagrin). Morton used this tangible metaphor as a way to get his hands around (so to speak) the concept of "The Cloud" as Symantec announced plans to expand its cloud technologies and services.

Service Expansion

Steve Morton, Symantec vice president of product marketing, puts Chief Technology Officer Mark Bregman, and Senior Vice President of Symantec Hosted Services Rowan Trollope, in the Hot Seat -- literally -- sitting them down to discuss the future of Symantec Hosted Services, formerly known as MessageLabs. Symantec plans to expand its hosted services, growing it from around five percent to about 15 percent of its business over the next few years, driven by new offerings such as DLP and endpoint security services, in addition to an array of Web filtering and messaging security services.

Windows 7 Migration

Darren Thomas, Dell's vice president and general manager of enterprise storage business, talk about how Dell's partnership with Symantec aims to simplify IT structure and ease Windows 7 migrations for end-user customers. The two companies partnered last March when Dell released the new systems management console DMC built on Symantec's Management Platform. The collaborative partnership was designed to consolidate systems management processes, and unify monitoring and management for all Dell servers, storage and clients through a single browser window. The integrated console also enabled Symantec products such as Altiris Client Management Suite 7.0 and Altiris Server Management Suite 7.0, Symantec Endpoint Protection, and a spate of BackupExec products to be added at the customer's discretion.

Integration, Not Segregation

Greg Hughes, Symantec's group president of enterprise product group, told the keynote audience that Symantec would continue to increase the level of consolidation, integrating technologies and products across its portfolio. During the conference, Symantec released four comprehensive suites while executives reinforced that it integrated deduplication technologies into the latest version of its enterprise backup product Net Backup, and would enable more products to be integrated with Enterprise Vault. Looking ahead, Hughes said that the company plans to focus on comprehensive security and storage suites, anticipating that current IT and economic trends will accelerate the need for consolidation and ultimately eliminate the need for myriad point products.

Show Me How It's Done

As part of the keynote presentations, Steve Morton (left), Symantec vice president of product marketing; peers over the shoulder of Ketan Shah, product manager for storage and availability management group; Greg Hughes, group president of the enterprise product group; and Deepak Mohan, Symantec senior vice president of the information management group, as they demonstrate the company's recent Data Insight release. Executives hailed the recent release as one that enables organizations to improve data governance, with greater visibility into unstructured data and files, including documents, spreadsheets and e-mails. Executives said that the product also integrates across Symantec's product portfolio in security and storage, helps organizations identify their most critical information, enables simplified data clean-up, provides continuous monitoring and auditing of data usage for adherence to corporate policies and regulatory compliance, and makes storage environments more efficient.

Suites, Suites And More Suites

During the Vision 2010 opening keynote, Steve Morton, vice president of product marketing, (left), peers at his colleagues, Tom Salmond, Symantec technical enablement manager and Duane Newman, Symantec director of product management, as they detail the four security suites Symantec released. Altogether, Symantec launched the Symantec Control and Compliance Suite, which is designed to better enable customers to develop and enforce IT policies. The company also released Symantec Data Loss Prevention Suite 10.5, which addresses data loss through social media, the Altiris IT Management Suite, which offers improved security and better manageability of information and infrastructure, and Symantec Protection Suites, which provides protection for specific areas of IT infrastructure along with endpoint, server and gateway security management.

Backing It Up

Deepak Mohan, Symantec senior vice president of the information management group, discusses the numerous technologies incorporated into the company's recent releases of Backup Exec 2010 and NetBackup 7, launched in January, which among other things, integrated source and target based deduplication, as well as greater protection for data in virtual environments.

More Awards

During the second night of its Vision 2010 Conference, Symantec presented awards to its Users, recognizing winners of its User Challenge. User groups were put into 20 teams of three to four players, requiring users to play games that entailed a competitive waffle-ball "mini-golf" challenge, a "brain freeze" challenge, trivia questions, racing a remote control car around the pool, and assembling a puzzle.

Meeting Of The Minds

Contestants involved in the Symantec User Challenge put their intellectual skills to the test during the Quiz Challenge, by answering trivia questions.

Hole In One

During the Symantec Vision User Challenge, contestants got an experience in true physical exertion and intellectual aptitude in a grueling round of competitive waffle mini-golf tournament at the MGM Grand's open outdoor patio.

Gallery Of Viruses

In addition to such culturally rich and stimulating games, Symantec channel partners attending Symantec's Vision Partner Night could peruse some of the "infected artwork" from the MessageLabs own "virus" artist. The code from various high profile malware is broken down and subsequently plugged into a computer program that transforms it into a unique design which is then placed on a canvas screen and displayed as art.

Users Suck

Users suck. No literally, they do. Or they did in this Symantec Vision User Challenge contest. During the User Group Challenge, contestants were required to slam down an entire pitcher of ice cold virgin Pina Colada mix. A raging headache and an aversion to snow cones for the rest of one's life might be a small price to pay for the honor of Brain Freeze Champion.

What's Missing?

Not surprisingly, Symantec's Take Control Partner Night, held on the second night of the Vision 2010 Conference, was all about letting loose and having fun, with a "Nascar" bent. Partners got to "take control" (get it?) of an array of gadgets and toys, including video racing games, motorcross and a Micro Reality Race track. In this case, a Symantec Vision partner climbs aboard a snowmobile simulator and hangs on. Now all he needs is about three feet of snow and a parka.





The theme was "Take Control" with a Nascar flavor. Symantec had several games including Nascar racing games, motocross racing games, a snowmobile simulator, and a Micro Reality Race track.

Talented Bartenders

During "Take Control Tuesday" Partner Night, Symantec channel partners were treated to impromptu juggling by the multi-talented bartender. The opening night social event gave channel partners the chance to relax, reconnect, have a few drinks, and be entertained. This was Vegas, after all.

80s Arcade Revisited

Symantec partners relive their youth as they tightly grip the steering wheel of the arcade-style racing games during the Take Control Partner Night party. And at least some partners reawakened their 80s video game addictions.

Hope It's Me

Symantec Partners cross their fingers drop their names at the Contest Counter in hopes that their name is drawn for trips and gadgets such as a Kindle, iPod Touch, iPads, Xbox 360, Wii and Dell Mini Computers.

Love This Stuff

Symantec channel partners' competitive nature was further demonstrated as they sat on the edge of their seat and gripped the controllers for their remote control cars as they sped around the Micro Reality Race Track, which often tends bring out that killer "trample the competition" instincts in the most docile of players.

Booth Games

Symantec partners play booth games on the show floor at the MGM Grand during the "Take Control" Partner Night.

Puzzling

For the final round of the User Challenge, Symantec's user groups pools their resources to piece together a puzzle as part of the Symantec User Challenge. The puzzle pieces appear to be yellow and black. Hmmm...wonder what it could be?