'Vision'aries

Last week, I attended Symantec's Vision conference in San Francisco where the company outlined its strategy for the next 12 months.  John Thompson unveiled his new corporate organization with three business unit leaders (Enrique Salem, Jeremy Burton and Kris Hagerman).  This reorganization should scale research and development resources and customers should see benefits starting with integrated products.  Customers will start to see the Symantec brand the wonderful yellow colors when buying the traditional storage management and data protection products.

Thompson is a software market visionary, most notably for combining a consumer (Symantec) and an enterprise (Veritas) organization to take on Microsoft.  After painting all the products the same color, it is now time for Thompson to hand over the reigns to his new business leaders and focus his attention on the balance sheet.  He has a new CFO, a billion dollar tax bill over his head, and a stock price that has struggled since the Veritas deal was announced.  Investors need to see John in person, hear the story from him, and most importantly, see a progress report on what has been done since the acquisition.  These proof points are necessary to reinvigorate investor confidence and bring Symantec's market capitalization back to where a leader like Thompson can leverage it effectively.

Two Proof points

Symantec made it known at the conference and during its earnings call that is undergoing a significant project whereby software licensing and pricing is being simplified for channel partners and customers.  This is a much needed undertaking and is something that other vendors (EMC, HP and IBM) should seriously consider.  A note to customers:  If buying storage and data protection products reminds you of trading pork bellies and S&P futures with put and call options; tell your vendor to take a hike.  It should be easy to decipher what products you need and how much they cost.

A few months ago, I blogged about Symatec's Application Performance Management (APM) product suite and how it was the 'hidden gem' of the company.  I am reaffirming my statement as this product can now integrate with the Change Management software Symantec just launched.  The new product, Configuration Manager, was acquired from Relicore in February 2006. Customers can utilize Symantec's i3 APM products to identify potential performance issues and then make necessary modifications.  Performance can them be measured after these changes to see if they made a difference.  This is the 'modeling' capabilities that customers need because the risks of the configuration alterations are mitigated as Change Management software maintains a historical record of what was moved. If the changes do not increase performance or create an unforeseen problem, customers can quickly identify the previous configuration and shift things back to the way they were.

One final comment on Vision; Scott McNealy gave the partner keynote.  His speech was tremendous.  He satirized the monopolistic Microsoft, hammered the 'save every piece of data' spewing EMC, and discussed his free time after being 'promoted' to Chairman.  Outside of hitting plastic golf balls into the crowd and pointing out the obvious data center challenges customer's face (power utilization, vendor lock-in, etc), his speech really did not have a point.  I am a big fan of condescending satirical comedy so McNealy moved up a few rungs in my visionary ladder.  However, he needed two more slides to make a point that Sun was poised to help customers solve their problems.  Then again, maybe this point was implied via the competitive digs and the free Sun servers given to those who caught the golf balls.

End note

My apologies for missing last week's blog.  No excuses.  I should have Blackberried it while on the 101 on my way to San Francisco for Symantec's Vision Conference.  What I would have said would have been kudos to Quantum and its CEO, Rick Belluzzo, for leveraging its balance sheet to buy ADIC.  Its about time someone in the storage industry used its cash to consolidate the industry.  With its acquisition of ADIC, Quantum removes a competitor from the market reducing the amount of choices systems OEMs have when looking for tape solutions.  This should improve tape system pricing and provide a catalyst for Quantum's bottom line growth.