Thompson kicks off Symantec's Vision conference with a keynote address aimed at the future.LAS VEGASSymantec Chairman and CEO John
Thompson didn't have any new product news to speak of when he opened the annual
Vision user conference here at the Venetian on June 10, but he did allude to a
couple of big deals that will happen this fall.
Thompson, now in his 10th year at the helm of the
world's largest-selling software security company, said Symantec will be
announcing OEM deals with Dell and Sun Microsystems "later this
year." One of them will involve the integration of his company's Altiris
Software Virtualization Solution Professional into Dell's ever-growing software
portfolio.
In the other partnership transaction, Sun will be incorporating Symantec's
storage virtualization software into its own set of products, to help with
archiving and e-discovery capabilities.
Both Sun and Dell, strong in hardware but still filling gaps in the storage
software department, need a one-stop shop like Symantec to give them a variety
of choices in this area.
"Dell and Sun are both Global Premier Sponsors of this conference, and two
close allies of ours," Thompson said. "Dell's new [data center]
management console to come this fall will be built completely based on our
Altiris software. It will provide archiving, messaging and endpoint security on
a single pane of glass for the IT administrator.
"Sun will be using our storage virtualization software for energy conservation,
archiving and e-discovery purposes. This should all be finalized this fall."