Symantec COO: Partners Will Benefit From Breakup

Symantec's plan to split into separate security and storage businesses should result in a big win for the channel, according to the company's Chief Operating Officer Stephen Gillett.

Gillett, in an interview with CRN following the Thursday announcement of the Symantec's planned historic breakup, said there would be "no big reveal on change of strategy," with regards to the its channel program and activities as the Mountain View, Calif.-based company transitions into two separate entities.

"We are still super committed to the channel in our program," Gillett said. "We talked through the strategy and we recommitted to our program and the structure."

[Related: Symantec Security, Storage Breakup Has Partners Holding Breath]

Gillett said the channel program will not undergo major changes. Any contractual changes that may be required on current and future sales with customers are being reviewed by Symantec's legal team, he said.

Symantec promoted Rick Kramer as the company's North America channel chief. Kramer had been serving in an interim role following the departure of John Eldh in August.

"We'll be spending time looking at the biggest contracts and relationships and if there's any concern, we'll address it," Gillett said. "There's a key effort around this with our legal and sales teams."

Gillett said the breakup "harmonizes the company's research and development investments" into each business and partners will see support and sales personnel that are more focused on the specific markets.

"This is a move that you should be excited about," Gillet said. "[Partners can] continue to do business with customers and [be] partnered with a company that now has [a] very focused and streamlined market strategy."

Symantec acquired data storage vendor Veritas Software for $10.2 billion in 2005. It was a move that, over the course of the last two years, the company determined had no real synergy with its security business, Gillett said. Sales teams moved from product-based to peak-based specialization and it immediately became apparent that sales lifecycle and buyers of products were different, Gillett said.

"We gained some real and immediate market insights into how customers are buying products and that was the key that didn't go unnoticed," he said. "There were two distinct engagements going on."

The company's information management business, once the transition is completed by the end of next year, would consist of Symantec's backup and recovery, archiving, eDiscovery, storage management and information availability products. The products business had revenue of $2.5 billion last year.

The security business consists of Symantec's endpoint security and management products, data encryption, mobile, SSL, authentication, mail Web and data security security, data loss prevention, hosted security and managed security services. Symantec said the revenue from those products last year was $4.2 billion.

Symantec partners say the breakup could be troublesome for resellers on both sides of the portfolio, but those that specialize solely in security or information management should reap the biggest benefit.

A frequent sales tactic from many of Symantec's rivals is to call the company not totally committed to security, said Kevin Wheeler, founder and managing director at Dallas-based information security services company InfoDefense. A breakup will alleviate any doubts that security is the top priority, he said.

"I'm excited about it," Wheeler said of the split. "As far as I'm concerned they have the leading best-of-breed products and moving forward they are going to have the ability to improve them significantly."

Symantec recently made subtle channel program changes that hinted at a potential breakup, according to one solution provider, who requested anonymity. Those included changes to its storage channel program, the motivation of which now appears to make more sense in light of its newly-publicized plan to split into two companies.

Symantec, for example, changed its certification process from the traditional take-a-class-pass-a-test approach to one that requires developing a complete response to a business scenario.

"You now need to write up a complete solution starting with the quote," the solution provider said. "You need to engage your sales rep to do the quote, and you have to get your technical person to look at the solution. And you can't ask Symantec any questions. You have to make certain assumptions. You have to think."

Symantec is also moving from selling standard licenses to providing something like a not-for-resale license to customers who then pay for what they actually use, and not a fixed rate for the license, the solution provider said.

They are interesting moves for Symantec which is facing a market that is completely saturated with data protection software.

"Look at the backup scenarios today," the solution provider said. "Everybody sells a bazillion licenses. Now everybody has backup. You have to push someone else out to get a new customer."

Symantec and Veritas never really meshed well, so it makes sense to split, the solution provider said. "The Veritas side died. Symantec has to revive it. This sounds like a way to do it."

CRN Senior Editor Joseph F. Kovar contributed to this report.

PUBLISHED OCT. 9, 2014