The rumors we've been hearing for weeks are true: Data protection provider Symantec, which swallowed storage company Veritas four years ago and has had indigestion ever since, is weeding out its staff and is in the process of laying off a number of longtime employees.

A substantial number of these, The Station has learned, are from the Veritas side of the company. No specific numbers have been given, but company spokeswoman Sherri Walkenhorst confirmed the "restructuring" of the company this morning to eWEEK.

News of layoffs in major Silicon Valley corporations -- or in any corporation, for that matter -- is always a downer, no question. However, often they are not a surprise, either. In this case, several sources for The Station have said that they are not surprised about this news.

"EMC, NetApp, HP -- even Dell -- have been eating Symantec's lunch on the storage side for months," one key source told us. "I'm not surprised in the least."

"They're also having problems with their products on the security side," another observer said. "I know more than a few people who junked their Norton stuff over the last year or so."

Our best wishes go with those people who have been deposed from their jobs at the Cupertino, Calif., company. Now it's time for CEO John Thompson to get his act together and cook some good results or get out of the kitchen; he's had four years to bring the merger together and it looks as though it's not ever going to work.

We'll keep our eyes peeled on this one.