'The New Symantec' will be bigger, says AP chief
In fact, Symantec will be "net hiring in every country" that it operates in, said Steven Leonard, the company's senior vice president of Asia-Pacific and Japan, during a press briefing here last Friday.
Leonard however, declined to specify how many positions are available, only saying that Symantec will be adding to the 2,700 staff it currently employs in 17 countries across the Asia-Pacific, including Japan.
The security giant had previously forecasted in fiscal 2006, ending Mar. 31, as a US$5 billion company. However, it will only comment on financial expectations after it reports its second-quarter results on July 28. During its last fiscal year, Symantec generated US$2.6 billion which represented a 38 percent increase over the previous year, while Veritas made US$2 billion, a 17 percent increase.
For now, Symantec will be concentrating on working with partners across the Asia-Pacific to bring the company's integrated products to a wider audience, Leonard said. The company is currently in the midst of 10-city partner roadshow across the region to communicate its product strategy and roadmap, he added.
For the next six months, Symantec and Veritas will be testing and certifying each other's products to ensure that they interoperate, explained Edward Lim, Symantec Singapore's country manager. The newly-merged companies will also jointly offer products around business continuity, e-mail management and regulatory compliance.
One of the first combined offerings will feature Symantec's DeepSight and Veritas' NetBackup products, which will trigger systems to automatically download available updates, he noted.
In the following six to 12 months, Symantec will also establish a common user interface, common licensing structure, common installation and Live Update integration for integrated products, he said.
At the final phase of integration, which will take place after 12 months, the merged company should have a full portfolio of new information integrity management solutions based on shared technology, applications compliance and performance optimization software, and a seamless support and licensing infrastructure, said Lim.
"We will bundle products in a logical way," he said, adding that one of the first products to be launched will likely be a product that can help ensure the integrity of e-mail messages. It combines Symantec's BrightMail, an anti-spam software, and the Veritas KVS Enterprise Vault, an e-mail archiving software.