Burton Leaves Symantec, Joins Serena

Burton, who until Monday was group president for enterprise security and data management at Symantec, was with Veritas for three years, most recently serving as executive vice president for data management and chief marketing officer.

Symantec officially acquired Veritas in June of 2005 in a $13.5 billion deal.

Art Wong, senior vice president of security response and managed services, is taking over on an interim basis as group president of Symantec.

Symantec executives were not available to discuss Burton's departure. However, the company e-mailed the following statement to reporters: "Jeremy Burton is a talented executive and he has a tremendous opportunity as the new president and CEO of Serena Software. We congratulate him on his appointment and wish him the best of luck. Symantec has a strong management team in place with extensive experience that will continue to drive our success as a company."

Serena Software, San Mateo, is a developer of change management software. Its products include Serena Mariner for project and portfolio management, Serena TeamTrack for streamlining operational processes, Serena Dimensions for governing application lifecycle management, and Serena ChangeMan ZMF for managing mainframe software changes.

With the hiring of Burton, Michael Capellas, former chairman and CEO of Compaq before its acquisition by Hewlett-Packard, will resign as acting president and CEO of Serena and resume his role as senior advisor for Silver Lake Partners.

The departure of Burton from Symantec is only the latest in a series of departures since the acquisition of Veritas.

Last March, Gary Bloom, the former CEO of Veritas, left his position as vice chairman and president of Symantec.

In October of 2005, Allyson Seelinger resigned as vice president of global channel sales and strategy at Symantec and was replaced by Julie Parrish, the former Veritas channel chief.

A month earlier, John Schwartz, president of Symantec and one of the driving forces behind convincing investors and customers to accept the acquisition of Veritas, left to join Business Objects, San Jose, Calif.

And in January of 2005, Michael Sotnick, Veritas' vice president of channel sales, left the company to join SAP.

Burton joined Veritas in mid-2002 from Oracle, where he was senior vice president of marketing.