Symantec CTO confirms Altiris integration

Rob Clyde, Symantec vice president of technology, believes the purchase of Altiris will enable the combined company to make better in-roads into winning business from small to medium enterprise firms.

In an exclusive interview with COMPUTERWORLD magazine, Clyde said the sweet spot for Altiris products is definitely in the small to medium enterprise (SME) space although they have established in-roads into the enterprise.

"Clearly we (Symantec) will continue to have a heavy focus on the small to medium enterprise but I think we will make in-roads and more opportunities to leverage the Altiris platform across the product line," Clyde said.

"Symantec currently has three business units and Altiris would be the fourth, but that doesn't mean there will not be any staff integration.

"There is not a lot of competition with endpoint management products and no companies with a breadth of endpoint security products to begin with."

Clyde confirmed initially Altiris will not be broken up and be run as a Symantec business unit by Greg Butterfield, current Altiris president and chief executive officer (CEO) focusing entirely on endpoint management.

When asked about the integration issues surrounding Veritas products, and whether Symantec believes integration will hinder the Altiris product line, Clyde said there is no way Altiris could pose challenges the size and scale Veritas did.

"The Veritas merger touched every part of the Symantec business and we are certainly not looking at a similar situation with Altiris," Clyde said.

"Symantec has 17,000 employees, Altiris has 1000, and running Altiris as a business unit (inside Symantec) will give it focus.

"This deal was done because we believe in the technology and the people and as a revenue opportunity we are focusing on making sure we have the current staff on board to execute along expected revenue."