30 Minute Interview

“We allow SMBs to buy the basics and add features as their businesses grow”

Darrell Riddle - Director, Product Management, Symantec Corporation talks about Symantec's announcement on Windows protection and the company's plans for the Indian SMB market. Ajay Verma - Director, Channels & Alliances, Symantec chips in with an Indian perspective.

Darrell Riddle

You recently announced several products for Windows. Tell us about those.

Riddle: We recently launched a series of Windows protection products including Backup Exec 11d.

Microsoft Exchange is a mission critical application for many businesses and we thought of launching a few products that would protect this platform.

Backup Exec 11d, features Granular Recovery technology that enables recovery of critical data from Microsoft applications such as Exchange and SharePoint with Active Directory support. Backup Exec 11d also provides 128-bit and 256-bit AES encryption for securing backups.

This isn't to say that we are purely focusing on Windows for while the SMB segment is predominantly a Windows market, customers have deployed other platforms. E.g. Linux.

Issues such as cost of acquiring software, lack of technical expertise and restrictive budgets are always associated with Indian SMBs. How do you overcome these challenges?

Riddle: On a global basis, issues related to SMBs are more or less the same. We are putting in considerable effort in working with partners to educate SMBs about the protection that their data and systems need.

It's important to ensure that they have access to the right tools and solutions and have a basic level of protection namely an anti-virus to ensure that systems are secure and a backup solution to ensure that they have a backup in case of a system failure.

One of the challenges in the SMB segment is that the market is widespread. The challenge is to reach out to everyone who is looking to adopt our technology. We are aggressively trying to cover the market by getting into newer cities and geographies. Another key area that we are working on is to bring value appreciation in business.

Ajay Verma: Cost or price is a secondary issue when we talk of SMBs. We believe that it is the appreciation of the technology that brings value to an organisation. It's about creating a value appreciation and delivering it through a framework.

The third step in this cycle would be working out on specific programs for different markets like India. Through these programs we ensure that the cost of acquisition of technology is within the price estimates of customers.

We work on all these three domains to make sure that we offer the best products and solutions.

We studied this market and found that SMBs are cost-centric. We are trying to make our solutions affordable for them. We allow them to buy the basics and add features as their businesses grow.

We have also made some enhancements in some of our products for the SMB market, so that if a customer wants to deploy Vista, he can move to Vista, without worrying about security.

If you look carefully at the profile of an average SMB, there is heavy adoption of Windows. That's where our Windows protection solution comes into the picture. Protection from Symantec's view has three dimensions. One is protecting the infrastructure, second is protecting information and the third is protecting interactions.

While doing so, the goal is to minimise the cost of management. Some tools that we offer, for example- Symantec Ghost Solution Suite 2.0, eases migration to Windows Vista.

It helps to manage infrastructure, significantly bringing down the cost.

Globally, we have a 56 percent share of the in backup market on Windows. If we look at the overall data protection market our share is 48.6 percent globally.

Piracy is one of the biggest issues when we talk of software. How do you tackle this?

Ajay Verma: Piracy is a regional problem. Price is considered as the biggest factor causing piracy. I think, price is related to the value that you perceive. It's all about value perception.

One of the key things that we are focusing on is creating greater awareness. A lot of these products that we offer have to be updated regularly. Having legal software offers a significant benefit. But, you cannot be lulled into the belief that I have an original or legal copy of software and I am protected. You are still exposed to attacks because the security landscape keeps changing and every day new viruses, new threats and vulnerabilities keep coming up.

As a company, our responsibilities are to create awareness and work with industry standard bodies like NASSCOM and Business Software Alliance (BSA) to spread awareness. Awareness levels are rising but we still have a long way to go.

—Megha Banduni