Symantec Unveils New Resources to Empower Partners

Symantec Corp. today reinforced its commitment to help partners succeed in 2010 and beyond, unveiling a variety of new resources at its annual partner conference, Symantec Partner Engage 2009. These new enhancements are part of Symantec’s commitment to helping partners increase their revenue and relevance with their customers and to improve their readiness to support customers’ changing needs. New program elements include:

* SymDemo – An online tool that allows partners to demonstrate Symantec’s products anywhere, anytime with a laptop and an Internet connection.
* Enhanced Enterprise Authorized Renewals Program – A revised enterprise renewals program to help protect partners’ investment with increased margins and incumbent protection.
* Enterprise Security Specialization – Partners who earn this specialization will receive advanced tools and incentives for selling Symantec Enterprise Security Solutions.
* Partner Community on Symantec Connect – An online community that connects partners with Symantec and each other, enabling collaboration and information exchange.

“The technology market is highly competitive and constantly evolving, so Symantec is focused on helping our partners solve their customers’ IT challenges, differentiate themselves and grow their businesses,” said Randy Cochran, vice president, North American channel sales, Symantec Corp. “We’re giving our partners even more opportunities to drive revenue and maintain relevance with their customers and helping them be prepared with the skills, solutions and resources necessary to meet the needs of today’s challenging IT environment.”

SymDemo

Currently available to members of Symantec’s PartnerDemo Pilot, SymDemo, a virtualized, web-based demo and training platform, empowers partners with tools to perform product demos anytime, anywhere with a laptop and Internet connection. SymDemo gives partners remote accessibility by enabling them to give demonstrations without the need for a dedicated VPN connection. Like SymBrain, an online sales tool that helps partners quickly and easily determine the best Symantec solution for customers' IT projects, SymDemo started as an internal Symantec resource and has been extended to partners.

Enterprise Authorized Renewals Program

Symantec has enhanced its Enterprise Authorized Renewals Program based on valuable feedback received from its partner advisory council and the partner community. Available now, the updated program is designed to help partners protect their investment in Symantec and create a more efficient renewal process. The program honors the incumbent partner’s investment and enables greater margin retention; it also ensures consistency and improves overall customer experience within the renewal process.

The program is open to Gold and Platinum partners in the United States and Silver, Gold and Platinum partners in Canada who are enrolled in the Symantec Authorized products program in North America and have signed a Direct Reseller Addendum. It applies to enterprise renewals of NetBackup, Storage Foundation, Cluster Server and Enterprise Vault.

Enterprise Security Specialization for Partners

Symantec’s newest specialization will give partners qualified to sell Symantec Enterprise Security solutions greater opportunity for improved profitability and differentiation. Partners who earn the Enterprise Security Specialization will have access to incentives, programs and specialized content, as well as recognition as a Specialized partner within Symantec’s Partner Locator.

This Specialization requires that partners attain sales and technical accreditations in Symantec Protection Suite Enterprise Edition, which ensures partners are highly competent in selling and deploying Symantec Enterprise Security solutions. With the specialization, partners can more effectively deliver solutions that solve their customer’s most critical security challenges. The Enterprise Security Specialization will be available in late 2009 to Symantec Channel GSP, Platinum, Gold, Silver and Registered partners in North America.

New Partner Community on Symantec Connect

Symantec has added a new partner component to Symantec Connect, the company’s online community for customers and partners. Available now, this new partner community connects partners with Symantec and each other, enabling them to collaborate and utilize technical and business information within one online community. It provides a forum for partners to engage with other partners, ask questions and make suggestions to Symantec channel leadership via forums, blogs and idea exchange. Visit Symantec's Partner Community now for the latest news from Partner Engage 2009.

Partner Quotes:

“Symantec understands the importance of having the right resources and information readily available to better support our customers,” said Gavin Hood, vice president, Ontario, ESI Technologies. “Through these new programs and tools provided by Symantec, we have access to more options for customers, which in turn enables us to deploy solutions faster and simplify the budgetary process.”

“Symantec’s Partner Program provides ITS with the tools and training needed to further engage our customers at a higher contact level,” said Chuck Hegarty, vice president, Business Development, ITS Partners. “Thanks to Symantec, our sales team knows what questions to ask and they have done their homework before engaging with a potential customer. These new enhancements to the program will help us drive even greater success in 2010.”

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Symantec Announces 2009 Partner Award Winners

Symantec Corp. today announced the 2009 North American Partner Award winners at Symantec Partner Engage 2009. The Symantec Partner Awards recognize partners who have invested in Symantec and successfully combined Symantec software with their own services to solve customers’ most complex business challenges. The winners of the 2009 Symantec Partner Awards are Allen Informàtica, CDW, Forsythe Solutions Group, GTSI, Ingram Micro Canada, Lanworks, Inc., Precision Computer Service and SHI.

“Symantec’s partners are vital to our success and we’re focused on helping our partners continue to increase their revenue, grow their business and stay relevant with our joint customers,” said Randy Cochran, vice president, North American channel sales, Symantec. “The 2009 Channel Partner Awards recognize the focus of our partners who have truly invested in themselves and Symantec to deliver solutions that help customers reduce costs and minimize risks to deliver a near-term return on investment.”

Partner Engage 2009 is being held at the JW Marriott in Orlando, FL from November 4-6, 2009. Symantec’s annual partner conference addresses partners through various keynotes and breakout sessions on relevant topics including data protection, storage management and high availability, endpoint management and security, the Symantec partner program and sales and partnering strategies. For more information please visit the Partner Engage website.

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Symantec to Speak at Upcoming Investor Conferences

Symantec Corp. (Nasdaq: SYMC) today announced its executives will be speaking at the following investor conferences in the December 2009 quarter:

* Lazard Capital Markets Conference on Nov. 5 at 3:30 p.m. PT in San Francisco
* NASDAQ OMX Investor Program on Dec. 1 at 3:45 p.m. GMT in London
* Credit Suisse Technology Conference on Dec. 3 at 11:30 a.m. MT in Phoenix
* Raymond James IT Supply Chain Investor Conference on Dec. 15 at 9:40 a.m. ET in New York City

Live webcasts and replays of the presentations will be available. Interested parties can view the webcasts and the replays over the Internet through Symantec’s Investor Relations Web site at www.symantec.com/invest. Please go to the Web site at least 15 minutes early to register, download and install any necessary software.

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Healthcare Organizations May Not Be Prepared for HITECH

With the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act underway, healthcare organizations face new challenges to maintain privacy and security of patient health data. However, data gathered from healthcare IT and security professionals indicate that many organizations may not be ready to meet some of the HITECH components of the ARRA legislation and other security challenges, according to the results of the 2009 HIMSS Security Survey, sponsored by Symantec Corp. (Nasdaq: SYMC).

While healthcare organizations recognize that patient data must be protected, the survey results show that:

* Security budgets remain low
* Organizations often don’t have a response plan for threats or a security breach
* A designated Chief Security Officer or Chief Information Security Officer is not in place

In addition, the survey reveals that healthcare organizations are not using the current security technologies available to keep patient data safe. Respondents to this survey widely use audit logs with data from firewalls, application logs and server logs as common information sources. Yet, when analyzing the log data, only 25 percent of respondents reported electronic analysis of that data. Respondents indicate they are using firewalls and user access controls, but are not implementing all available technologies to secure data. Only 67 percent of responding organizations use encryption to secure data in transmission, and fewer than half encrypt stored data.

“Healthcare organizations are continually looking for ways to save money,” said David Finn, health IT officer, Symantec Corp. “One of the best ways to accomplish these goals is through investing in technologies that will automate and reduce the risks of a security incident and lower the chances of a compliance issue. Although awareness about these issues is high, many providers have not yet made significant moves to the address these concerns.”

Other key survey results include:

Security Budget: Approximately 60 percent of respondents reported that their organization spends three percent or less of their organization’s IT budget on information security. This is consistent to the level of spending identified in the 2008 study.

Maturity of Environment: Respondents characterized their environment at a middle rate of maturity, with an average score of 4.27 on a scale of one to seven, where one is not at all mature and seven is a high level of maturity.

Formal Security Position: Fewer than half of respondents indicated that their organization has either a formally designated CISO (Chief Information Security Officer) or CSO (Chief Security Officer).

Patient Data Access: Surveyed organizations most widely implement user-based and role-based controls to secure electronic patient information. Approximately half of respondents reported that their organization allows patients/surrogates to access electronic patient information. Patients/surrogates are most likely to be granted access to high level clinical information, such as diagnosis or lab results.

Management of Security Environment: Nearly all respondents reported that their organization actively works to determine the cause/origin of security breaches. However, only half have a plan in place for responding to threats or incidents related to a security breach.

Security Controls: Most respondents reported that they use the information generated in their risk analysis to determine which security controls should be used at their organization. About 85 percent of respondents reported that they monitor the success of these controls and two-thirds of these respondents measure the success of these controls.

Risk Analysis: Three-quarters of surveyed organizations conduct a formal risk analysis (only half of these conduct this assessment on a yearly basis or more frequently), which has remained the same in the past year. Three-quarters of organizations that did conduct risk assessments found patient data at risk due to inadequate security controls, policies and processes. Conducting this analysis positions organizations to identify gaps in their security controls and/or policies and procedures.

Security in a Networked Environment: Nearly all respondents reported that their organizations share patient data in electronic format. Respondents are most likely to report that they share data with state government entities. Respondents also reported that the area in which they are most likely to share data in the future is with Health Information Exchanges (HIEs)/Regional Health Information Organizations (RHIOs). Approximately half of these organizations (41 percent) indicated that these sharing arrangements have resulted in the use of additional security controls beyond those that were already in place at their organization. This is consistent with the data reported in the 2008 survey.

Future Use of Security Technologies: E-mail encryption and single sign on and were most frequently identified by respondents as technologies that were not presently installed at their organization but were planned for future installation.

Medical Identity Theft: One-third of respondents reported that their organization has had at least one known case of medical identity theft at their organization. However, only a handful of these organizations experienced direct consequences from the breach.

“Healthcare organizations must approach all IT activities, including data security, with effective management and efficient use of their budgets, staff and technologies,” said Lisa Gallagher, HIMSS Senior Director, Privacy and Security. “IT and security professionals must recognize the need for securing patient data by using available technologies and preparing for compliance with current ARRA laws and future regulations. This complex operating environment, as well as our national goals for health IT, demands such action to ensure quality, safety and improved healthcare delivery.”

Targeting Chief Information Officers and Chief Security Officers and other Information Technology (IT) executives, the 2009 HIMSS Security Survey focused on an assessment of 196 information technology (IT) and security professionals in the healthcare field of their own readiness for today’s risks and security challenges.

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Symantec Simplifies Backup and Recovery to Help Small Businesses

Symantec Corp. (Nasdaq: SYMC) today announced the availability of Backup Exec System Recovery 2010, a complete data and system backup and recovery solution for small businesses. Backup Exec System Recovery 2010 automates the backup process of an entire system or individual files and folders without disrupting user productivity, and enables quick restores to the same or dissimilar hardware, virtual machines or remote locations. Backup Exec System Recovery 2010 introduces new support of the latest Microsoft operating systems, including Windows 7, Microsoft Exchange 2010 and Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2, easing the transition to the new platforms and ensuring continued protection during migration. With the new release, Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery will also support Linux operating systems later this year.

“Today’s small businesses need the peace of mind that only comes with a cost-effective, reliable backup and recovery solution that will protect their information and systems to minimize downtime and avoid disaster,” said Pat Hanavan, vice president, Symantec Information Management Group. “Backup Exec System Recovery 2010 provides small businesses with affordable protection so they can easily recover what they need, when they need it and to whatever physical or virtual environment they want.”

For small businesses, backup and recovery is both a challenge and a concern. According to a recent survey¹ of 1,650 small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) and their customers, there is a large discrepancy between how SMBs perceive their disaster readiness and their actual level of preparedness. According to the survey, SMBs noted they were confident in their level of disaster preparedness (84 percent), but their practices reveal that this confidence is unwarranted.

The average SMB has experienced three outages within the past 12 months, with the leading causes being virus or hacker attacks, power outages or natural disasters. This is alarming as almost half report they do not yet have a plan to deal with such disruptions. While most companies deploy some form of backup, only one in five (23 percent) back up on a daily basis and 40 percent back up monthly or less. The survey also demonstrates small businesses that lose data due to disaster also lose sales and customers.

Backup Exec System Recovery provides small businesses with a single, easy-to-use solution for backup and recovery. Backup Exec System Recovery 2010 now includes Symantec’s patent-pending Granular Recovery Option, previously optional. This capability allows small businesses to back up an entire file server, desktop, laptop, virtual server or critical application server, such as Microsoft Exchange or Microsoft SharePoint, and then restore granular items such as individual Exchange emails, SharePoint documents or individual files in minutes. Backups can be saved to a variety of disk storage devices and can be copied to an off-site location or secondary disk device for disaster recovery purposes.

In addition, Backup Exec System Recovery adds new support for the latest virtual environments, including VMware vSphere 4.0, Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008, and Citrix XenServer 5.x. This new support ensures that the more technical small businesses that integrate virtualization into their IT environments can convert physical systems to virtual machines through Backup Exec System Recovery for disaster recovery or testing purposes.

Organizations can easily manage their backup environment at local and remote locations from a single, centralized console with Backup Exec System Recovery Management Solution, available with Backup Exec System Recovery 2010 at no additional charge. Channel partners can benefit from this feature as it provides them with complete remote control over their customers’ backup environments through a VPN connection, allowing them to create, edit and distribute backup jobs, policies, installation packages, upgrade packages and client settings and enables remote recovery of volumes and/or complete systems. In addition, the Backup Exec System Recovery product line includes editions that backup and recover Microsoft Windows Servers, Microsoft Windows Small Business Servers as well as desktops and laptops.

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Symantec Reports Second Quarter Fiscal Year 2010 Results

Symantec Corp. (Nasdaq: SYMC) today reported the results of its second quarter of fiscal year 2010, ended Oct. 2, 2009. GAAP revenue for the fiscal second quarter was $1.47 billion. Non-GAAP revenue was $1.48 billion, down 3 percent over the comparable period a year ago (down 2 percent after adjusting for currency).

“Execution against our key priorities in a tight spending environment enabled us to achieve solid results,” said Enrique Salem, president and chief executive officer, Symantec. “In particular, we were pleased with the strength in the consumer segment and with the initial progress in SMB security. We are encouraged by the signs of stabilization in the markets we serve and are confident that we will continue to see gradual improvement over the next few quarters.”

“We delivered solid results on each of our key financial metrics and our cash flow generation highlights the strength of our business model,” said James Beer, executive vice president and chief financial officer, Symantec. “Our continued focus on expense management resulted in better than expected earnings.”

GAAP Results: GAAP operating margin for the second quarter of fiscal year 2010 was 17.4 percent compared with 14.3 percent for the same quarter last year. GAAP net income for the fiscal second quarter was $150 million compared with $126 million for the same quarter last year. GAAP diluted earnings per share were $0.18 compared with earnings per share of $0.15 for the same quarter last year, up 20 percent year-over-year. GAAP deferred revenue as of Oct. 2, 2009 was $2.91 billion compared with $2.71 billion as of Oct. 3, 2008, up 7 percent year-over-year.

Cash flow from operating activities for the second quarter of fiscal year 2010 was $226 million. Symantec ended the quarter with cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments of $2.33 billion.

Non-GAAP Results: Non-GAAP operating margin for the second quarter of fiscal year 2010 was 29.2 percent, flat year-over-year. Non-GAAP net income for the fiscal second quarter was $294 million. Non-GAAP diluted earnings per share were $0.36 compared with earnings per share of $0.37 for the year-ago quarter.

Non-GAAP deferred revenue as of Oct. 2, 2009 was $2.91 billion compared with $2.72 billion as of Oct. 3, 2008, an increase of 7 percent year-over-year. After adjusting for currency, non-GAAP deferred revenue increased 4 percent year-over-year.

For a detailed reconciliation of our GAAP to non-GAAP results, please refer to the attached consolidated financial statements.

During the second quarter of fiscal year 2010, Symantec repurchased 7.9 million shares for $120 million at an average price of $15.22.

Business Segment and Geographic Highlights

For the quarter, Symantec’s Storage and Server Management segment represented 38 percent of total non-GAAP revenue and declined 9 percent year-over-year (declined 8 percent after adjusting for currency). The Consumer segment represented 31 percent of total non-GAAP revenue and increased 6 percent year-over-year on an actual and currency adjusted basis. The Security and Compliance segment represented 24 percent of total non-GAAP revenue and declined 3 percent year-over-year (declined 1 percent adjusting for currency). Services represented 7 percent of total non-GAAP revenue and declined 1 percent year-over-year (flat after adjusting for currency).

International revenue represented 51 percent of total non-GAAP revenue in the second quarter of fiscal year 2010 and declined 2 percent year-over-year (flat after adjusting for currency). The Europe, Middle East and Africa region represented 31 percent of total non-GAAP revenue for the quarter and declined 5 percent year-over-year (declined 1 percent after adjusting for currency). The Asia Pacific/Japan revenue for the quarter represented 15 percent of total non-GAAP revenue and increased 5 percent year-over-year (increased 3 percent after adjusting for currency). The Americas, including the United States, Latin America and Canada, represented 54 percent of total non-GAAP revenue and declined 4 percent year-over-year on an actual and currency adjusted basis.

Third Quarter Fiscal Year 2010 Guidance

Guidance assumes an exchange rate of $1.47 per Euro for the December 2009 quarter versus the actual weighted average rate of $1.32 per Euro for the December 2008 quarter, approximately an 11 percent currency benefit. The end of period rate for the December 2008 quarter was $1.39, approximately a 6 percent currency benefit versus the $1.47 per Euro assumption for the December 2009 quarter.

For the third quarter of fiscal year 2010, ending Jan. 1, 2010, GAAP revenue is estimated between $1.484 billion and $1.514 billion. GAAP diluted earnings per share are estimated between $0.23 and $0.24. GAAP deferred revenue is expected to be in the range of $2.998 billion and $3.048 billion.

Non-GAAP revenue for the third quarter of fiscal year 2010 is estimated between $1.485 billion and $1.515 billion. Non-GAAP diluted earnings per share are estimated between $0.36 and $0.37. Non-GAAP deferred revenue is expected to be in the range of $3.000 billion and $3.050 billion.

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Symantec Authorizes $1 Billion Share Repurchase Program

Symantec Corp. today announced that its Board of Directors has approved a $1 billion share repurchase program.

“This action reflects the confidence we have in our cash flow generation and our ongoing commitment to increase shareholder value,” said Enrique Salem, president and chief executive officer, Symantec.

This open-ended program is effective immediately. Repurchases will be made in accordance with applicable securities laws in the open market or in privately negotiated transactions. Depending on market conditions and other factors, these repurchases may be commenced or suspended from time to time without prior notice.

Symantec has approximately $57 million remaining under the current program. Since June 2007, when the previous share authorization was approved, Symantec has repurchased more than $1.9 billion of its shares.

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