Symantec Vision: A Merged Approach

$13.5 bn merger between Symantec and Veritas made the data

storage and security software company the fifth largest software in the world.



The 'new' Symantec would be more about safeguarding information, from the
desktop to the data center. This was announced at the company's annual event,

'Symantec Vision', in Mumbai. In his keynote, Steven Leonard, senior vice

president, Asia-Pacific and Japan, said, "Our vision is to integrate

information and take a more holistic view of information management."

He also stressed the need for a progressive approach to attain

information integrity and end-to-end integrated solutions that proactively

protect and recover information and IT assets.

Symantec will now have a portfolio to tackle all

security-related issues, including e-mail security. The solutions aim at

protecting systems from email-generated threats, and help manage the increasing

cost of storage for email, and meet compliance and risk-management requirements.

The company's integrated information-integrity solution has

three focus areas. e-mail security and availability, wherein it protects from

email-borne threats and manages the increasing costs of storing email. It also

meets compliance and risk-management requirements. Another focus area is

business continuity, where it provides vulnerability management and

disaster-recovery solution. Lastly, for regulatory compliance, the company

implements IT controls for automated and repeatable process and enables

retention and timely retrieval of regulated documents.

Post

Vertias merger, Symantec is all geared up to cover all the bases of storage and

security. It would offer solutions on Windows platform for security, and backup

on UNIX-it already has storage. Symantec will strength its product support and

advance its consulting services. Also, with the addition of new partners, it

plans to extend market coverage. The company will also invest in local

engineering centers.

The event gave the company's partners and developers an

overview of Symantec's new role in security and storage markets, showing

clearly that it intends to move beyond the SMB market-to becoming a true

enterprise player. The merger of Symantec and Veritas has indicated that both

the companies have finally recognized the importance of integration of security

management and storage management, which is imperative to fulfill customers'

requirements for efficient enterprise data management.

The company also unveiled its new strategy for ensuring the

integrity of information for Windows. Key to the company's strategy is

securing information and keeping it safe from the myriad malicious threats on

the Internet. Second, information must always be available, and kept safe from

administrators' errors, hardware failures, and site disasters. To deliver on

the combined strategy, Symantec is building its capability on the Windows

platform and has come up with Backup Exec 10d and LiveState Recovery 6.0 for

Windows servers.

The event also saw enterprises bagging the 2005 Visionary

awards. The recipients were: Bharti Tele-Ventures, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, Punjab

National Bank, and TCS. Award recipients were chosen on their innovative use of

Symantec's software to achieve business results.

Rahul Gupta