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Symantec Corporation is the largest maker of security software for computers, best known for its Norton brand. The company is headquartered in Mountain View, California, and is a Fortune 500 company and a member of the S&P 500 stock market index.

History[link]

Founded in 1982 by Gary Hendrix with a National Science Foundation grant, Symantec was originally focused on artificial intelligence-related projects, including a database program. Hendrix hired several Stanford University natural language processing researchers as the company's first employees, among them Barry Greenstein (professional poker player and developer of the word processor component within Q&A).

In 1984 it became clear that the advanced natural language and database system that Symantec had developed could not be ported from DEC minicomputers to the PC. This left Symantec without a product, but with expertise in natural language database query systems and technology. As a result, later in 1984 Symantec was acquired by another, smaller software startup company, C&E Software, founded by Denis Coleman and Gordon Eubanks and headed by Eubanks. C&E Software was in the process of developing an integrated file management and word processing program.

The merged company retained the name Symantec, and Eubanks became its chairman, Vern Raburn, the former CEO of the original Symantec, remained as CEO of the combined company. Soon after the merger, Eubanks and Raburn recruited Rod Turner into Symantec as its executive vice president for marketing, sales, product management and international business. Turner had been in interviews and discussions with C&E Software in early 1984 about becoming the president of C&E. These discussions had ended when the two companies merged. The new Symantec combined the file management and word processing functionality that C&E had planned, and added an advanced Natural Language query system (designed by Gary Hendrix and engineered by Dan Gordon) that set new standards for ease of database query and report generation. The natural language system was named "The Intelligent Assistant". Turner chose the name of Q&A for Symantec's flagship product, in large part because the name lent itself to use in a short, easily merchandised logo. Brett Walter designed the user interface of Q&A (Brett Walter, Director of Product Management), which set new standards for logical and easy to use design.^{[citation needed]} Q&A was released in November 1985.

During 1986, Vern Raburn and Gordon Eubanks swapped roles, and Eubanks became CEO and president of Symantec, while Raburn became its chairman. Subsequent to this change, Raburn had little involvement with Symantec, and in a few years time, Eubanks added the Chairmanship to his other roles.

After a slow start for sales of Q&A in the fall of 1985 and spring of 1986, Turner signed up a new advertising agency called Elliot Dickens, embarked on an aggressive new advertising campaign, and came up with the "Six Pack Program" in which all Symantec employees, regardless of role, went on the road, training and selling dealer sales staff nationwide in the USA. Turner named it Six Pack because employees were to work six days a week, see six dealerships per day, train six sales representatives per store and stay with friends free or at Motel 6. Simultaneously, a promotion was run jointly with SofSell (which was Symantec's exclusive wholesale distributor in the US for the first year that Q&A was on the market). This promotion was very successful in encouraging dealers to try Q&A.

During this time, Symantec was advised by Jim Lally and John Doerr – both were board members of Symantec at that stage – (Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers) that if Symantec would cut its expenses and grow revenues enough to achieve cash flow break-even, then KPCB would back the company in raising more venture capital. To accomplish this, the management team worked out a salary reduction schedule where the chairman and the CEO would take zero pay, all vice presidents would take a 50% pay cut, and all other employees' pay was cut by 15%. Two employees were laid off. Eubanks also negotiated a sizable rent reduction on the office space the company had leased in the days of the original Symantec. These expense reductions, combined with strong international sales of Q&A, enabled the company to attain break-even. Because all team members were sharing in the suffering of reduced income, and because of the unifying affects of the Six Pack Program, Symantec's morale during this period was very high – the more so when one considers that the company had a very uncertain future at this time.^{[citation needed]}

The significantly increased traction for Q&A from this re-launch grew Symantec's revenues substantially, along with early success for Q&A in international markets (uniquely a German version was shipped three weeks after the US version, and it was the first software in the world that supported German Natural Language) following Turner's having placed emphasis on establishing international sales distribution and multiple language versions of Q&A from initial shipment.

In 1985, Rod Turner negotiated the publishing agreement with David Whitney for Symantec's second product, which Turner named NoteIt (an annotation utility for Lotus 1-2-3). It was evident to Turner that NoteIt would confuse the dealer channel if it was launched under the Symantec name, because Symantec had built up interest by that stage in Q&A (but not yet shipped it), and because the low price point for the utility would not be initially attractive to the dealer channel until demand had been built up. Turner felt that the product should be marketed under a unique brand name. Turner and Gordon E. Eubanks, Jr., then chairman of Symantec Corporation, agreed to form a new division of Symantec, and Eubanks delegated the choice of name to Turner. Turner chose the name Turner Hall Publishing, to be a new division of Symantec devoted to publishing third-party software and hardware. The objective of the division was to diversify revenues and accelerate the growth of Symantec. Turner chose the name Turner Hall Publishing, using his last name and that of Dottie Hall (Director of Marketing Communications) in order to convey the sense of a stable, long established, company.^[4][5] Turner Hall Publishing's first offering was Note-It, a notation utility add-in for Lotus 1-2-3, which was developed by David Whitney, and licensed to Symantec.^[6][7] Its second product was the Turner Hall Card, which was a 256k RAM, half slot memory card, initially made to inexpensively increase the available memory for Symantec's then flagship product, Q&A. The Turner Hall division also marketed the card as a standalone product. Turner Hall's third product, also a 1-2-3 add-in was SQZ! a Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet compression utility developed by Chris Graham Synex Systems.^[8] In the summer of 1986 Eubanks and Turner recruited Tom Byers from Digital Research, to expand the Turner Hall Publishing product family and lead the Turner Hall effort.

By the winter of 1986–87, the Turner Hall Publishing division had achieved success with NoteIt, the Turner Hall Card, and SQZ!. The popularity of these products, while contributing a relatively small portion of revenues to Symantec, conveyed the impression that Symantec was already a diversified company, and indeed, many industry participants were under the impression that Symantec had acquired Turner Hall Publishing. In 1987, Byers recruited Ted Schlein into the Turner Hall Product Group to assist in building the product family and in marketing.

Revenues from Q&A, and from Symantec's early launch into the international marketplace, combined with Turner Hall Publishing, generated the market presence and scale that enabled Symantec to make its first merger/acquisition, in February 1987, that of BreakThrough Software, maker of the TimeLine project management software for DOS. Because this was the first time that Symantec had acquired a business that had revenues, inventory, and customers, Eubanks chose to change nothing at BreakThrough Software for six months, and the actual merger logistics started in the summer of 1987, with Turner being appointed by Eubanks as general manager of the TimeLine business unit, Turner was made responsible for the successful integration of the company into Symantec and ongoing growth of the business, with P&L. There was a heavy emphasis placed on making the minimum disruption by Eubanks and Turner.

Soon after the acquisition of TimeLine/Breakthrough Software, Eubanks reorganized Symantec, structuring the company around product-centric groups, each having its own development, quality assurance, technical support and product marketing functions, and a General Manager with profit and loss responsibility. Sales, finance and operations were centralized functions that were shared. This structure lent itself well to Symantec's further growth through mergers and acquisitions. Eubanks made Turner general manager of the new TimeLine Product Group, and simultaneously of the Q&A Product Group, and made Tom Byers general manager of the Turner Hall Product Group. Turner continued to build and lead the company's international business and marketing for the whole company.

At the TimeLine Product Group, Turner drove strong marketing, promotion and sales programs in order to accelerate momentum. By 1989 this merger was very successful – product group morale was high, TimeLine development continued apace, and the increased sales and marketing efforts applied built the TimeLine into the clear market lead in PC project management software on DOS. Both the Q&A and TimeLine product groups were healthily profitable. The profit stream and merger success set the stage for subsequent merger and acquisition activity by the company, and indeed funded the losses of some of the product groups that were subsequently acquired.^[9] In 1989, Eubanks hired John Laing as VP worldwide sales, and Turner transferred the international division to Laing. Eubanks also recruited Bob Dykes to be Exec VP for operations and finance, in preparation for the upcoming IPO. In July 1989 Symantec had its IPO.

In May 1990 Symantec announced its intent to merge with and acquire Peter Norton Computing, a developer of various utilities for DOS. Turner was appointed as product group manager for the Norton business, and made responsible for the merger, with P&L responsibility. Ted Schlein was made product group manager for the Q&A business.

The Peter Norton group merger logistical effort began immediately while the companies sought approval for the merger, and in August 1990, Symantec concluded the purchase—by this time the combination of the companies was already complete. Symantec's consumer antivirus and data management utilities are still marketed under the Norton name. At the time of the merger, Symantec had built upon its Turner Hall Publishing presence in the utility market, by introducing Symantec Antivirus for the Macintosh (SAM), and Symantec Utilities for the Macintosh (SUM). These two products were already market leaders on the MAC, and this success made the Norton merger more strategic. Symantec had already begun development of a DOS based antivirus program one year before the merger with Norton. The management team had decided to enter the antivirus market in part because it was felt that the antivirus market entailed a great deal of ongoing work to stay ahead of new viruses. The team felt that Microsoft would be unlikely to find this effort attractive, which would lengthen the viability of the market for Symantec. Turner decided to use the Norton name for obvious reasons, on what became the Norton Antivirus, which Turner and the Norton team launched in 1991. At the time of the merger, Norton revenues were approximately 20 to 25% of the combined entity. By 1993, while being led by Turner, Norton product group revenues had grown to be approximately 82% of Symantec corp's total.

At one time Symantec was also known for its development tools, particularly the THINK Pascal, THINK C, Symantec C++, and Visual Cafe packages that were popular on the Macintosh and IBM PC compatible platforms. These product lines resulted from acquisitions made by the company in the late 1980s and early 1990s. These businesses and the Living Videotext acquisition were consistently unprofitable for Symantec, and these losses diverted expenditures away from both the Q&A for Windows and the TimeLine for Windows development efforts during the critical period from 1988 through 1992. Symantec exited this business in the late-1990s as competitors such as Metrowerks, Microsoft, and Borland gained significant market share.

Norton products[link]

The 2009 line-up included Norton 360, Norton AntiVirus (for Windows and Mac), Norton Internet Security (for Windows and Mac), Norton SystemWorks (which now contains Norton Utilities), Norton Save & Restore, Norton Ghost, Norton pcAnywhere, Norton Smartphone Security, Norton Partition Magic, Norton Online Backup, and OnlineFamily.Norton.

The Symantec Security Response organization (formerly Symantec Antivirus Research Center) is one of the foremost antivirus and computer security research groups in the industry with over 400 full-time employees.

Enterprise software[link]

Approximately two-thirds of the company's revenue is derived from software designed for companies and large organizations, i.e. enterprise software.

Symantec substantially grew its enterprise business when it acquired VERITAS Software. Its Flagship enterprise security software are End Point Security and Protection Suite (Small Business Edition) for 5 users and up.

End Point security has continuous update capability as well as user defined update schedule. Furthermore it has proactive intrusion prevention capability, malware, spam protection and content filtering. The latest version of Symantec Endpoint Protection is 12.1.

Protection Suite (Small Business Edition) is tailored for small business with minimal to almost no IT staff at affordable price levels. The package includes End Point security, as well as system backup and recovery. The system backup and recovery complements Ghost solution suite. In small business, the system backup and recovery works better for PC and system protection and Ghost from minimal technical expertise point of view. The suite also has some Exchange protection features. The protection suite 4 has a tool to remove malware from infected PCs. Reference: Symantec product specification.^[10]

As of September 25, 2011 the latest released version of Small Business protection suite is 4. There are many fraudulent emails claiming to offer free upgrades to version 4^{[citation needed]}.

Symantec is also monitoring the Internet with the Symantec Global Intelligence Network, Deepsight,^[11] and publish an annual free report Internet Security Threat Report.^[12] This continuous threats knowledge is permitting Symantec to propose managed security services, from their Security Operations Center.^[13]

Symantec propose Enterprises to:

• Develop and Enforce IT Policies with Control Compliance Suite
• Protect Information with Data Loss Prevention Suite and Encryption (alias PGP)
• Authenticate Identities with VeriSign Identify and Authentication
• Manage Systems with Altiris IT Management Suite
• Protect the Infrastructure with Symantec Protection Suite (including SEP, ex-SAV: Symantec Antivirus, but also BackupExec from Veritas)

And is currently extending to cover Mobile and virtualization (with cloud computing evolution).

Mergers and Acquisitions[link]

ACT! acquisition and sale

In 1993 Symantec acquired ACT! from Contact Software International. Symantec sold ACT! to SalesLogix in 1999. At the time it was the world's most popular CRM application for Windows and Macintosh.^[14]

Veritas acquisition

On December 16, 2004, Veritas and Symantec announced their plans for a merger. With Veritas valued at $13.5 billion, it was the largest software industry merger to date. Symantec's shareholders voted to approve the merger on June 24, 2005; the deal closed successfully on July 2, 2005. July 5, 2005 was the first day of business for U.S. offices of the new, combined software company. As a result of this merger, Symantec includes storage and availability related products in its portfolio namely Veritas File System (VxFS), Veritas Volume Manager (VxVM), Veritas Volume Replicator (VVR) and Veritas Cluster Server (VCS), NetBackup (NBU), Backup Exec (BE), Enterprise Vault (EV).

Sygate acquisition

On August 16, 2005, Symantec acquired Sygate^[15] a security software firm with about 200 staff, based in Fremont, California. As of November 30, 2005 all Sygate personal firewall products were discontinued by Symantec and now appear^{[original research?]} to be part of Symantec's Norton range called Norton Personal Firewall (discontinued and merged into Norton-brand line of software).

Altiris acquisition

On January 29, 2007, Symantec announced plans to acquire Altiris and on April 6, 2007 the acquisition was completed. Altiris specializes in service-oriented management software that allows organizations to manage IT assets. They also provide software for web services, security, and systems management products. Established in 1998, Altiris is headquartered in Lindon, Utah, United States.

Application Performance Management sellout

On January 17, 2008, Symantec announced^[16] that they were spinning off the Application Performance Management business and its i3 product range to Vector Capital. Precise Software Solutions took over development, product management, marketing and sales for the APM business, launching as an independent company on September 17, 2008.^[17]

Acquisition of PC Tools

On August 18, 2008, Symantec announced the signing of an agreement to acquire PC Tools (company) such that PC Tools would maintain separate operations. The financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

MessageLabs acquisition

On October 9, 2008, Symantec announced its intent to acquire Gloucester based MessageLabs (a 2007 spin-off from parent company Star Internet) to boost its Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) business. Symantec purchased the online messaging and Web security provider for about $695 million in cash. (Currency fluctuation) The acquisition closed on November 17, 2008.

MessageLabs’ established suite of online services for messaging and web security complements the offerings available through Symantec Protection Network, the Symantec SaaS platform for providing market-leading technologies to customers online. The newly created SaaS product group will accelerate the development of new SaaS solutions and hybrid offerings for IT professionals that secure and manage information in the cloud. Customers will benefit from access to a greater number of SaaS offerings and the opportunity to purchase through a broader network of partners in more locations around the world

PGP and Guardian Edge Acquisition

On April 29, 2010, Symantec announced its intent to acquire PGP and Guardian Edge. The acquisitions provide access to established encryption, key management and technologies for Symantec's customers. The acquisition closed on June 4, 2010

VeriSign Security Acquisition

On May 19, 2010, Symantec signed a definitive agreement to acquire VeriSign’s security business, which includes the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) Certificate Services, the Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) Services, the VeriSign Trust Services and the VeriSign Identity Protection (VIP) Authentication Service. The acquisition closed on August 9, 2010.

ClearWell Systems Acquisition

On May 19, 2011 Symantec announced the acquisition of ClearWell systems for approximatelly $390 million.

"Symantec has entered into an agreement to acquire privately-held Clearwell Systems, Inc., a recognized leader in the eDiscovery market. Clearwell's eDiscovery solution complements and enhances Symantec’s Enterprise Vault eDiscovery capabilities for a more complete end-to-end eDiscovery solution. Symantec’s acquisition of Clearwell brings together the industry’s leading eDiscovery, archiving and backup offerings to provide customers one of the most comprehensive information management solutions available."

Liveoffice Acquisition

On January 17, 2012 Symantec announced the acquisition of cloud email archiving company LiveOffice. The acquisition price was $115 million.

LiveOffice, Symantec’s hosted archiving OEM partner for Enterprise Vault.cloud, will add a cloud-based messaging protection solution to Symantec's information security and management solutions arsenal.

Last year, Symantec joined the cloud storage and backup circuit with its Enterprise Vault.cloud and Cloud Storage for Enterprise Vault solutions, in addition to a cloud messaging solution, Symantec Instant Messaging Security cloud (IMS.cloud).

Symantec advised the acquisition will allow it to add to its information governance products, allowing customers to have the choice to store information either on-premise or in Symantec's data centers or a mix of both.

2012 source code hack[link]

On January 17, 2012, Symantec admitted to their network getting hacked. A hacker known as "Yama Tough" obtained Symantec's source code by hacking an Indian Government server. Yama Tough has released parts of the source code, and has threatened to release more. According to Chris Paden, a Symantec spokesman, the source code that was taken was from enterprise products that were between 5 and 6 years old.^[18]

Scareware allegations and lawsuit[link]

On January 12, 2012, James Gross sued Symantec for running fake "Scareware" scans that alert users to errors and problems that are on their computers. Gross claims after the scan only some of the errors and problems were corrected, and that in order to remove the rest the user is prompted to purchase software. After Gross purchased the software he claimed the software did not speed up his computer or remove the detected viruses. Gross later hired a digital forensics expert to back up his claim. Symantec has denied the allegations and said it will defend the case.^[19] This case has brought renewed debate on some of the tactics used by some security software companies, which are similar to tactics used by crimeware.^{[citation needed]}

Environmental record[link]

In June, 1997 Symantec corporation decided to build a garage in Eugene, Oregon. In order to do that, 40 of the largest trees in town were to be cut. During the ensuing protest the city police used up all their pepper spray stock, including that borrowed from the neighboring police departments.^[20]

The garage was built nonetheless. As of today Symantec moved to the neighboring town of Springfield and left most of the garage floors vacant. One third of the garage is currently used by Symantec's affiliate, Software Spectrum Inc.^[20]

See also[link]

	Companies portal
	San Francisco Bay Area portal
	Computer security portal

• Gordon Eubanks (former CEO)
• Huawei Symantec – Joint Venture of Huawei and Symantec
• List of mergers and acquisitions by Symantec
• PC Tools (company)

References[link]

This article uses bare URLs for citations. Please consider adding full citations so that the article remains verifiable. Several templates and the Reflinks tool are available to assist in formatting. (Reflinks documentation) (February 2012)

External links[link]

• Official website
• History of Symantec
• Norton Official Site
• Verisign Official Site
• PCTools Official Site
• Barrygreenstein.com with an article from the L.A. Times on Barry Greenstein, his poker career and his work at Symantec as employee number five.

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