… and they’re very good.

If you searched on our good friend Google for “Symantec appliances” you’d get the following results as the top two:

Symantec turns off on security appliances | The Register

Symantec is scaling down its hardware offering by pulling the plug on a range of network security appliances. The vendor will stop designing and making the …
www.theregister.co.uk/2006/06/27/symantec_appliances/

Avoid Symantec appliances, says Gartner – vnunet.com

Analyst firm predicts that Symantec will exit market sector.
www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2159677/gartner-advises-avoiding

Oh dear, that doesn’t bode well for me in my new role at Symantec where my two focus products at the moment are Enterprise Vault (formerly KVS, archiving software) and the Mail Security 8300 Series appliance! I’ve only been in the role two weeks and I’ve already overheard colleagues describe themselves loosing business because “.. we don’t do appliances”. I repeat, yes, Symantec still make appliances… and they’re very good! They don’t make the hardware, it’s well spec’d Dell kit, but they do everything else involved in getting an appliance developed and with customers.

The communication problem stems from an exit from making appliance hardware and forming a partnership with Juniper that occurred mid-last year. The releases weren’t particularly clear and the press certainly focused on the “stopping making appliances” part of them. I’m still not fully clear on what has happened/is happening with those “SNS” and “SGS” products but “SMS” (Symantec Mail Security) is going strong. Amusingly the road-map code names for the upcoming releases are mountain names which keep getting higher and higher… I hope they’re pacing themselves on the way to Everest! Though I hear sub-ocean mountains are higher…

It’s going to be a challenge reversing the perception that Symantec don’t make appliances and that they are a worthy and safe investment for customers to make but I’m sure our team is up to the task! The most frustrating thing for me so far is working out what is publicly promotable about the products and what is “secret”. Everything seems to be marked “Internal Only” by default and only gets made “External” if someone asks the right person the right question about the right material and they agree. I’m still trying to discover the best way for me to change that without stepping on too many toes or ruffling too many feathers!