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Symantec To Separate Into Two Companies
wiredmikey writes Symantec announced plans on Thursday to split into two separate, publicly traded companies – one focused on security, the other focused on information management. The company's security business generated $4.2 billion in revenue in fiscal year 2014 while its information management business meanwhile hit revenues of $2.5 billion. "As the security and storage industries continue to change at an accelerating pace, Symantec's security and IM businesses each face unique market opportunities and challenges," Symantec CEO Michael A. Brown, who officially took over as CEO last month, said in a statement. Garrett Bekker, senior analyst with 451 Research, called the decision "long overdue." "The company had become too big to manage, and they were having trouble keeping up with the pace of innovation in many areas of security," he told SecurityWeek. "The synergies between storage and security never really emerged, in part because in many firms, particularly large enterprises, they are managed by different internal teams."
I'm still waiting for one company to split into Micro and Soft.
Ezekiel 23:20
..Peter Norton Computing?
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I was expecting them to split into 2 mutually beneficial companies: one that produces virii, one that "protects" from them.
HP is a great example... one division responsible for a tool such as Fortify wants full price (or more) for another's use of the tool, though they'd both benefit. Every company I've worked for typically has one group trying to overcharge another, or even outright backstabbing, which is a real shame, because it only hurts the overall company's bottom line.
That's what you get when you put greedy MBAs in charge, worse when they don't reign in the behavior of their underlings, who are simply emulating their bosses.
Two smaller companies don't have to grow revenues as much to meet the EPS thresholds that institutional investors demand. They ONLY other option was to become IBM and that's to simply run around BUYING other companies.
It's just a matter of semantics
Is Symantec doing anything useful?
I think the last useful version of Norton Utilities was 6.0, which was before the Symantec buyout?
Now they're just marketing fear...
I apologize for the lack of a signature.
Call the information management side "Veritas" and apologize to the long time NetBackup customers for the Symantec years. They are lucky that some of us didn't jump ship after NBU was absorbed. Support, community and quality all took a hit.
That would have been an excellent idea about 10-15 years ago. Lots of people thought that splitting it into MS Applications (Word, Excel, etc.) and MS OS (Windows, etc.) would have been a great thing all the way around.
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John Gannon is supposed to be the new "general manager" of the Info Mgmt business - if he's not the CEO and Brown is still going to be in charge, what's the fucking point?
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
One that doesn't know how to make antivirus and one that doesn't have a clue about firewalls?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
*gasp* What's your next expectation, separation of industry and politics?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
How could this have possibly been a surprise to the people responsible for pulling off the merger? How large and thick the blinders must have been for this to not be recognized until after all the money had been spent during the acquisition and the obligatory layoffs of the redundant took place?
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
are they relevant? well, they are as in the way that getting rid of them is relevant. they're like malware...
or rather, having malware is less of a slowdown than symanshit scanning every file you access(and despite that failing on the nasty kind of targeted malware)
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
By use, I mean purchase ....
Summary says $4,200,000,000 last year, so I guess that's an answer for you.
That's a lot of Windows users unthinkingly renewing the subscription to the first-year-free Norton Slug that came with their computer.
I'd forgotten they still exist.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
Research says typical customers stick around longer than that, but believe whatever makes you happy.
What, they're spinning off their malware component from their malware-detector? That could actually result in one usable product...
I'm sure they do, from force of habit, which is why I keep encountering sluggish Windows systems that spring back to life as soon as I exorcise Norton Antivirus and put in Microsoft Security Essentials or Avast.
Shit, I thought this post was serious, until I saw who signed it.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Interesting theory, however Norton in particular is always near the top when it comes to having minimal impact on system performance in actual head to head testing. Again, believe as your anecdotes dictate.
An anecdote is a tale someone else relates to you. I'm relating experiences.
"a short and amusing or interesting story about a real incident or person"
What do I take from that?
Never again trust whoever did those benchmarks! They likely benchmarked the corporate, network version and used unclear English to make people think it was the awful thing they have.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
They are very clear which version (consumer version) and the language and benchmarks are very clear. In the past I also had complaints about the performance of Norton AV, maybe 7-10 years ago it WAS very slow. Those issues were real and those complaints and concerns were addressed, to the point where the current versions are in fact among the highest performers in the market. I say good for them.
into one division that writes the viruses and another that writes the antivirus.
I will never know. Some stink just won't wash out.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
It's true that the damage to their reputation from that era has been difficult to overcome, but people who are rational about it are slowing coming back and seeing things as they are; for them the stink washed out. Some customers it's really better to let someone else have anyway.
Why would it be 'rational' to go back to a company that has already demonstrated complete disregard for the user? Especially when there are superior free alternatives that have been good and trustworthy for decades? Their business model remains; include their crap on new machines, get suckers to pay for it. If it's slightly less crappy, who cares?
Seriously. Do you work for them? I can think of no other reason for your position.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Why would it be 'rational' to go back to a company that has already demonstrated complete disregard for the user?
Since when is "responding to customer concerns with an effective fix" complete disregard for customers? It seems exactly the opposite. The product has tested well for protection and top or near top for performance for the better part of a decade now; holding onto some past injury for what (in tech) is essentially a century is not rational.
I was willing to accept your assertion that it's good now. But 'it's been good for ten years'. Bullshit on you!
How long does it take to 'forgive' a company that distributes almost ransomeware software that requires an OS pave-over to get rid of? Impossible to set in years. 100% management turnover is a prerequisite. Vendors can ether be trusted or they can't, those can't.
Remember the dual with the third party uninstallers? Norton and McAfee both kept finding new places to hide, kind of like a virus.
Especially when there are better free alternatives that have a decades long record of trustworthiness. No benchmark will make up the 'track record of trust' difference.
Face facts, (Norton/Whatever they renamed McAfee to) make their money from people too stupid to remove the crapware that comes preinstalled on their discount PC. When software companies have to pay vendors to put their crap on new PCs, that's a sure mark of quality.
Not trusting and paying known bastards is rational. Not going to put any Sony factory made disks into any PC anytime soon. Even with the best antivirus and autorun disabled. Once someone is known to 'go there' you can never trust them again. A tiger cannot change it's stripes. Never give scorpions rides.
Do you work for them?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I was willing to accept your assertion that it's good now. But 'it's been good for ten years'. Bullshit on you!
"The better part of a decade" would be anything more than 5 years. I'm sticking to facts here, I'm sorry if they don't line up with your preconceived notions.