The recent Symantec Vision 2014 event in London – the culmination of four such global events that also took in Munich, Paris and Dubai – was packed with presentations, break-out sessions and panel debates on the key industry issues of the day. But nothing captured the minds of the delegates present more than the insights they gained into the company’s decision to divide its business into two separate trading organisations: one focused on Information Security and the other on Information Management.
The big question everyone wanted answers to was why this was happening and Simon Moor, VP of Symantec UK & Ireland, laid out the reasons in his keynote speech: “The evolution of the security and storage industries just continues to grow and accelerate. We believe it’s absolutely clear that we need distinct strategies that address both. We need focused investments for both, and go-to-market innovation to meet your needs,” he told delegates. “Separating Symantec into two companies will allow us to create and innovate businesses that can respond more quickly to your IT needs. This is about us being more agile as business units and we believe that we will do this better as separate companies.”
Symantec expects to complete the process by the end of 2015, he added. “However, in the meantime, it will be business as usual as Symantec continues to develop its products and technologies, and this will be an evolution to the company’s splitting.”
The decision to divide Symantec’s business along the lines of Information Security and Information Management comes at a time when the IT industry itself is in a dramatic state of change, illustrated by the instant on-line polling app at Vision, with Moor asking delegates to select, from a list of possible responses which was their most pressing IT challenge. Top was ‘Managing the exploding number and variety of mobile devices’.
“We’ve moved from a PC-centric environment to a device-agnostic world,” acknowledged Moor. “There will be around 26 billion connected devices by 2020, it is forecast. Symantec’s transformation as an organisation is about helping its customers to cope with all of that change; to address this highly complex digital landscape.”
This was a theme that was taken up wholeheartedly by Symantec VP of Marketing EMEA, Darren Thomson, in the next keynote address. Against the backdrop of an ever darker threat landscape, what was essential was a greater, more comprehensive and holistic approach to security management – especially the proactive management of security, he stressed.
“What if we could leverage Big Data and analytics, and help customers get ahead of the game? What if we could help you to predict the things that might happen, so that you could stand up security policy that’s appropriate to your particular risk context? What if we could by predictive about security, so that fewer threats get to us – but, when they do, we can react appropriately to mitigate that risk?” This was the vision towards which Symantec was now working.
At the same time, said Thomson, new pressures and demands meant that IT had had to evolve from a system-centric to an information-centric view of the world. “The expectation on IT, from the board’s point of view, is that it has become the information service delivery partner, allowing people to connect with information to differentiate their businesses.”
All of which, he told delegates, had fuelled Symantec’s decision to focus on two fundamentally important domains, ‘Symantec Security’ and ‘Information Management’, so that Symantec can provide both value around and risk mitigation for its customers. “Security is about empowering people in organisations to proactively use their information in a protected way. Information Management is about ensuring that information works for the business by giving visibility and access to that information in appropriate ways and, again, in context.”
The two new independent companies, Thomson pledged, would have a “maniacal focus” on those technology domains. “They are both strong businesses in their own rights. We want to alleviate and take away the pressure to constantly think of integration points between the two… We are not innovating quickly enough in either of these organisations, because we are trying to innovate between them.
“At Symantec, our belief is that we can only innovate and focus in the right way by separating the company and allowing those two companies to have that laser focus they now need.”
You can watch the keynote sessions on our Symantec YouTube channel. To access presentation materials from the Vision breakout sessions, please check out the dedicated site on Symantec Connect.