Symantec heads for services

Pune

May 4th, 2007

Symantec Corp. will now head towards the services turfs on the security
territory. The venture is expected to take shape by mid FY-07 and is anticipated
to spike the revenue contribution of services from current five percent to 10
percent by 2010. Overall revenue targets for FY-07 are pegged at $5 billion.

Anil Chakravarthy, VP, India -Technical Operations, Symantec, said that the
company is aiming for an increased role in services. "It would be a
two-pronged approach. Firstly, we will explore the operational services side for
remote management and maintenance of our software installed across various
customer and international locations. Secondly, we will explore a combination of
on-site and remote consulting services that are presently primarily handled
onsite." he added. However, Chakravarthy said that no concrete decisions
have been taken on partners and headcount as yet.

On the products side, Symantec's Pune R&D center is working on five key
new product areas. The version 1.0 of two products viz database security and
database automation have already been released while project 'FQP', data leakage
prevention and web security ones will be launched this year. These products have
been developed in India.

Symantec's India center is its largest R&D site outside US with 36
percent of its global R&D workforce. The Pune facility currently houses
around 2100 employees with full ownership of some key products. India
contributes to 20 per cent of its global product development. The company
released 100 new products and services in 2006 and inaugurated its second Indian
center of Innovation in Chennai recently. It invests around 15 per cent of its
revenue into R&D with research labs in 12 countries and claims a kitty of
over 300 issued US patents.