LOS ANGELES – Nine weeks after Symantec acquired Blue Coat and nine months after the security vendor officially split away from Veritas Technologies, the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company outlined its path going forward at its PartnerEngage conference.
From a market cap perspective, the combination of Symantec and Blue Coat makes the new company the largest security player in the industry with $4.6 billion in revenue and just under 400,000 customers worldwide. After doing a sales account analysis the combined company found that only 25 per cent of its customers has both Symantec and Blue Coat products. The opportunity for the combined Symantec/Blue Coat channel bases is to upsell and cross-sell the 75 per cent.
Greg Clark
Leading the new company is Blue Coat CEO Greg Clark, who took over in August as the new chief executive of Symantec. Clark outlined a market opportunity where the network has expanded massively in the enterprise on down to the SMB. Also the challenge of securing users that work today with a computer in the hand. Clark said that by 2020 every person will have at least five connected devices they use.
“Personal devices are showing up in the network. Users are everywhere and no longer can protect their device. The apps have left and are now in the cloud, while malware is deep and can access all. This is the state of play right now. It’s terrible, but there is no better industry to be in right now than cyber security,” he said.
Clark added that the incoming tide of cyber security threats can make his company and the channel a lot of money together.
The combination of Blue Coat and Symantec now makes the new Symantec firmly in the both Web and cloud security markets.
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Clark outlined six primary security areas the company is targeting.
- Advanced web and cloud security;
- Advanced threat protection;
- Encrypted traffic management;
- Incident response analytic and forensics;
- Web application protection; and
- Network performance and optimization.
The mid-market is a key area for Symantec. The company wants to make it a 100 per cent channel play. Clark added that new products will be coming out in this area specifically for endpoint security and for cloud access brokers or CASB.
Key to the company’s new strategy is the upcoming release of Symantec Endpoint 14 or SEP 14. This product is not yet available, but the plan is to release it before year’s end.
Jason Eberhardt, vice president of strategic alliance at solution provider Conventus, called SEP 14 a “game changer” because of its ability to be utilized in the cloud and on-premise.
“SEP is going to help us make money in the SMB and commercial space. After we educate the customer in helping them understand they now have options and can expand into the cloud securely and with a whole new posture it will bring us more opportunities,” he said.
For Clark he looks at SEP 14 as being just like ERP before they had a name for it. “For the channel this endpoint technology should be delivered to them in a way where they can easily consume it,” he said.
Going forward Symantec has packaged up its solutions that now include Blue Coat Web Gateway in four bundled solution sets. Clark called this overall solution Integration Cyber Defense and it consists of suites for Information, Users, Web, and Messaging.
The Information package contains products for Managed PRI, VIP/identity, Encrypted Traffic Management, and Data Protection.
In the Users section there is Management and Compliance, Data Centre, Endpoint Detection, and Endpoint Protection. SEP 14 is in this suite.
The Web area has Security Analytics, CASB, Content Analysis, and Web Protection.
Finally, in the Messaging segment Symantec is offering Encryption, Message Security, Anti-phishing and Email Protection.
“The Web Gateway from Blue Coat covers security from start to finish. This gives us the ability to move to the cloud and Symantec wants us to go this way. We can now become that gorilla in the room,” Eberhardt said.
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