Symantec Owns Veritas Licensing Mess

After all these years of doing the Gripe Line, I usually have a pretty good idea what kind of response any particular story is likely to get. But I was totally unprepared for the outpouring of anger from many longtime Veritas corporate customers over the ridiculous copy protection maze (see “Licensing Logjam Holds Back Veritas Customer”) Symantec is forcing them to run.

Many readers confirmed that Symantec licensing has become too complex for mere mortals. “To add to the nightmares of Backup Exec, I challenge you to use their licensing site without calling tech support,” wrote one reader. “You have to register your certificates and then ‘find’ them one at time. Entering your customer number and serial number in the waiting search boxes returns nothing. But, if you click on advanced search, leave everything blank, you will be rewarded with a listing of licenses you purchased. Think you are ready to activate now? Nope. Click on ‘view details’ for each one, individually, then ‘register the license’ and then, well, maybe your activation code appears. It seems some products have them and some agents and products don’t. But, to find out which ones are needed you must click on that magically hidden ‘view details’ button first. So, to buy and use Backup Exec we need a license number, serial number, certificate number, activation code, and have inspiration from heavens above to navigate through a minefield of searches that don’t work and hidden links that you must know about. The bottom line is I spent almost two hours waiting to talk to someone at Symantec who could me through the licensing page. Before Symantec, it was a pleasure to call Veritas and speak to someone with an American accent within about two minutes.”

One obvious effect of Symantec’s licensing hell is that it puts a heavy strain on Symantec’s already less-than-stellar support. “We purchased both Veritas Backup Exec and Brightmail Anti-Spam before Symantec bought either of them, and support was at least tolerable,” wrote another reader. “Since Symantec’s purchase, though, getting anywhere with support and licensing has been near impossible. After interminable holds just to get an operator, you get more interminable holds in the queues of the particular product they connect you to, and then numerous licensing mistakes, just like others are getting! And of course, it’s always ‘Due to unusally high demand…’ Yeah, right! For years now??? How about hiring a few more support personel, rather than spending all your money gobbling up all these companies?”

Those looking for the way out of the licensing maze be better off asking Google than Symantec. “We’ve had Symantec/Veritas support engineers tell us that a new knowledgebase system has left them unable to mine the company’s case history looking for solutions,” another reader wrote. “They suggested we do what they now have to do: use Google to search for solutions. In other words, they have to go outside the company to come back into their own knowledgebase in order to locate the information they need to solve new cases. Very sad indeed.”

Some readers see alarming signs that corporate customers of Symantec security products will soon be subject to the licensing torture as Veritas customers are already experiencing. “The licensing portal is already where you register all Symantec professional products — corporate anti virus for now doesn’t require a license to install, but I suspect they’ll be changing that,” says a reader who deals with both product lines for his clients. “I was having similar problems with upgrades for my clients until I somehow managed to hook with an escalation manager who not only walked me through their ridiculous procedure (at one point you need to hold down Shift when you click on a link, or you’ll just circle around to where you were), then offered to do all the work himself and let me know when I could “pick up” the install keys. But they freely admit it’s a licensing mess — ordered from the very highest reaches of Symantec — supposedly to prevent piracy. Instead it’s driving away customers. As I said to the escalation manager, you don’t stop pirates by burning down your own ship!”

But that seems to be exactly what Symantec’s licening portal is doing. “My org is a large Symantec/Veritas customer,” wrote another reader. “Back before Symantec bought them, things were much better. Had to struggle a bit to get serial numbers, but once you had them, you could get the software to run. Then, someone at Symantec panicked about piracy. Enter the Licensing Portal – a Dante-ish rung of hell. First you have to stuggle to buy the product. Then they e-mail you a cryptic PDF. Then you login to The Portal and tediously enter the info from the PDF. Hopefully, a few days later The Portal will e-mail you with yet another number. You then go back to The Portal and interact some more. Finally, yet another e-mail arrives telling you that the key is ready. Log back in again and get the key. Then hope it actually unlocks the software — which it won’t if the version is not exact. My sales rep has been very helpful, but even after months of struggle, we still don’t have all the keys for the products we have purchased. Everyone at Symnatec who has to provide support hates The Portal. I think it’s time that we marched on the corporate types who dreamed it up with flaming torches.”

It would seem that some of Symantec’s biggest customers are a little hot under the collar right now. Given that Symantec won my Worst Vendor of 2006 award — in large part due to consumer frustration over support and copy protection issues — you might think I would have anticipated such a reaction. But business customers tend to be far more tolerant of having to jump through a few hoops than your average consumer, so this level of frustration with Veritas licensing portal does indeed indicate something is very wrong. When preventing piracy has become a more important priority than delivering product to paying customers, no software company can stand the heat forever.

If there’s a vendor you’re really angry with, post your gripe on my website, leave a message on my voice mail at 1 888 875-7916, or write me at Foster@gripe2ed.com.

Read and post comments about this story here.