Symantec looks beyond storage

Last week in San Francisco was my first time at the Symantec Vision event, and I was surprised by the number of attendees (a crowd that would make Steve Jobs jealous) and by the relentless sequence of hands-on training and break-out sessions. Numerous Symantec partners populated the exhibits; Dell, for example, was showing off its newest array, the PowerVault MD1000.

Good stuff, but I was more interested in learning how the Symantec products were evolving after the acquisition of Veritas, a question that, you may remember, has been hanging since this dated column.

I found the answer at the show. The keynote from Kris Hagerman, a conversation we had after the show, and a few breakout sessions I attended all repeated the same message, which I could paraphrase as either “The sky is the limit” or “You ain’t seen nothing yet.”

First, let me introduce Hagerman, senior vice president of Symantec’s Data Center Management Group, which in plain English means the gentleman controls about one-third of Symantec business, focusing on enterprise-class products.

“[My group] is basically Veritas pre-merger, with the exception of Backup Exec, a Windows Backup product for SME, and Enterprise Vault, an e-mail archiving product,” Hagerman explains.

The other two groups that form the new Symantec are a consumer group (anti-virus and similar goodies) and one that’s focused on enterprise security and data management products, including Backup Exec and Enterprise Vault, plus messaging, LiveState Recovery, anti-spam, and more.

Obviously the juicy stuff for enterprise storage happens in the group Hagerman coordinates (which explains why I was at his keynote), but how does the new structure of Symantec impact its strategy — if at all?

Here’s an example: One of the significant announcements coming out of Vision is the release of Storage Foundation Basic, a free version of one of Symantec’s crown jewels that offers a consistent software layer to manage storage across just about any OS. 

Symantec is now offering a free — although limited — version because it’s a gamble to win more customers: The company is betting that you’ll get addicted to the full range of features of the freebie, and you won’t hesitate to update to a full, licensed version when your requirements grow or when your attempts to do things using native storage tools become too challenging, whichever comes first.

With Storage Foundation Basic, “we want to help customers reducing the complexity in their datacenter and creating a more standard operating environment,” Hagerman says.

The second product to facilitate that strategy is the new Storage Foundation Management Server, essentially a centralized management console for Storage Foundation that eliminates the need to browse each server’s local SF GUI.

“[Storage Foundation Management Server] allows customers to do things that would take hours, if not days, in a handful of clicks,” Hagerman says.

It’s ambitious, but Symantec’s ambition is not confined to storage. The company plans to repeat the success of Storage Foundation with Server Foundation, a server management suite of applications. I’m seeing a possible future convergence with Command Central, Symantec’s SRM (storage resource management) jewel, but Hagerman is not giving away much, other than conceding that the two products are complementary and that they were developed by the same team

“We are announcing again a strategy and an intent to begin integrating efforts like configuration management, provisioning management, and high availability in a single solution,” Hagerman says. “That’s what’s Server Foundation is.”

Symantec customers — many of whom have been asking for a move in that direction for a long time — will probably be glad to hear that goal re-stated. Those customers will be even happier when Symantec knocks on their doors to deliver products that meet the vision. 

Will this finally happen? It should, but let’s check on Symantec’s progress again next June, after Vision 2007.

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