One message is coming back loud and clear from Symantec's customers: "We like the core technologies you give us, but, in a lot of cases, we need the offerings to be tailored more specifically for us."
It's understandable, and something we are very aware of at Symantec and try to react to. If you're a small business, for example, you may want to consume our products in a certain way – such as in the form of a Web service – while, if you are a consumer, you may want it delivered quite differently.
To that end, a key goal of the Symantec 4.0 strategy is to deliver a ’Right for Me’ offering – that is, a combination of a technology that provides the right levels of protection with a solution that best meets a customer’s particular requirements . That might be gauged by the size of the customer (large enterprise versus small business) or according to how they want to consume the offering: e.g. , as a service, appliance or software. Also, there are the tailored products for particular industries where customisation is required to create more specialised solution (telcos are a prime example of a vertical sector where this is frequently the case).
Equally, scale matters within our customers' industries, in a number of ways. Having a large global intelligence network is important, for example, when you are delivering better security and quality of protection. Also, scale supports enterprises as they expand globally.
While our current leading products will continue to serve our customers, as Symantec moves forward and requirements evolve, those same customers are asking for more tightly integrated solutions closely targeted to their “bigger problems” as CEO Steve Bennett likes to say.
When I hear customer feedback and our “right-for-me” approach, my first thought is to “reality-check” this with people who talk to customers everyday and don’t always look through the world with Symantec-colored glasses. So here’s my question to you analysts out there - When you talk to clients, are they looking these types of “right-for-me” fixes to their problems? What would “right for me” look like for a customer dealing with multiple products, advanced threats, too much storage, and not enough intelligence?”
I would love to hear your take.