Enrique Salem is a latin executive who has climbed many positions inside an organization: after being in charge of the sales and marketing global department, he was recently appointed Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Symantec. Salem spent many days in Argentina, but only nine hours in Buenos Aires: time enough to gather along with the local affiliate’s personnel and also to be exclusively interviewed by Information Technology. Nowadays, the software security and information management company continues purchasing different enterprises so as to enlarge its services and solutions to organizations, but the rumour that involves a very interested Hewlett-Packard, trying to acquire Symantec has appeared in the latest market news. Salem rejects the existence of discussions and conversations to firm up a purchase, even tough he admits that some offers are irresistible and that the market tends to settle down.
Salem agrees on the fact that the most important soon-to-be-solved-issue here, as regards meeting the Argentinian employers, is the staff’s wage agreement resetting. In his own words, “it’s something that happens all over the world, specially in emerging markets, costs of living are changing; living in Buenos Aires is extremely expensive. That is one of the questions we were asked and it’s important to be dealt with”
In what sense is Symantec still an Internet and computing security company?
Our organization has changed. A lot of people used to get to know us through the antivirus’ software, but that is not our only production. We are the world’s forth biggest company as regards software, and we have made it up to there thanks to solutions to protect infrastructure. And it’s not only security, but also availability. This is very important, because it deals with the idea of recovering information if a problem appears. And now, there’s something interesenting going on with our clients: the information has to be protected not only at the end or in any database, but also interaction needs to be watched closely, as, for example, in the Internet.
But everytime the industry comes up with a solution, a different and new issue made up by “crackers” complicates the situation again. So, have the area suppliers failed?
We are analyzing and studying a lot of information, so as to see how we can change the model, because nowadays we are facing extremely fast attacks. So, we are using new tools, such as SONAR (Symantec Online Network for Advanced Response), a new technology that enables to detect threats without having even seen them. Besides, around 30 per cent of the world’s e-mails passes along Symantec software, because our products are located in several ISP and companies, which lets us examine new methods of attacking. Potential developing launching will always be a combination between new and old methods, because several clients are interested in knowing how the attacks are and what they consist of. So, if everything were automatical, they wouldn’t know what to modify in their networks or in their companies.
There are plenty of high quality freeware tools. So, why would you say it’s convenient for someone to pay an important amount of money for one of your services?
We cannot take risks as security problems regards. The cost of being safe has to do with the whole entire system: it’s not just blocking an attached file to prevent a future problem. What people are willing to know doesn’t restrict to what the software is blocking, but to how to be able to administrate and work with that.
Rumours of HP purchasing your company are all over. Have you mantaining conversations with the HP organization about this?
No, we haven’t. The industry keeps on strengthening, and that happens because the organizations want to trade with less companies: the idea of working with a huge number of suppliers appears to be complicated. That would be a too-many-interlocutors-scenery. An when there’s a issue to be solved, it’s better to deal with it by the means of one company. Our market works with around U$S 50.000 million. Our own chances are big and we are not planning to join our forces with another organization. Our strategy is to grow purchasing companies. Anyway, no one knows what might happen, if we are offered a check...

 

Alberto Felissia,
Head of Manfrey’s Departamento de Informática
User’s question
I was wondering if you are planning to get an update for Symantec Web-Security (SWS) 3.0, a piece of  Symantec Antivirus Enterprise Edition. The latest version is a 2004 one, the exact same year we started using this software at the company.
Our plan is to keep on supporting SWS 3.0, we are not planning to launch an update for future versions at the time. Clients are able to renew their SWS and SWS products maintenance plans and subscriptions (for ISA platform of Microsoft ISA Server), until prevously appointed dates. We plan to hold up to these products and their security contents until their expire support-date: June the 4th 2008 for SWS and June the 4th 2009 for SWS ISA.

Security and software
IDC consulting firm assures that Symantec is ranked as the fifth company of software supplier all over the world, after Microsoft, IBM, Oracle and SAP, with an income of U$S 4.936 million in 2006, and 2,14 per cent of market share. Last 2007 trimester, it earned U$S 2.880 million, a 12 per cent increase, compared to the same period in 2006.
As regards the security devices market, the increase was of 64 per cent in 2007 first six months. According to IDC’s last research on “Security Appliances”, Symantec sold 1.574 units in the mentioned period as regards Argentinian market, which implied a 52 per cent-growth in a market that was estimated to be U$S 4,2 million at the beginning of 2007.
Symantec’s net profits in Latin America are of U$S 104 million and they increase over 100 per cent in 2007, if comparing with 2006. In 2005, the companie merged Veritas, an organization that specializes in software storage, getting involved in a U$S 13.500 million operation, and they have recently acquired Vontu, supplier in terms of solutions to prevention of data loss, for U$S 350 million. Some other recently purchases: Altiris, n 2007; Relicore, IM Logic, BindView, in 2006; Sygate and WholeSecurity, in 2005, and Brightmail, KVaultSoftware Limited and TurnTide, in 2004. This organizations functions forty countries and administrates more than 25 Service Centres.

Translated by Natalia Bocassi