Symantec tries harder as number two

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Symantec tries harder as number two

By Richard Morochove

First published September 10, 1998

It's no trick to guess which developer sells the most software packages through computer retailers. But who comes after giant Microsoft?

Symantec Corp. is number two, according to Dana Siebert, recently appointed as executive vice-president of worldwide sales, marketing and services for the company.

Symantec's name doesn't immediately pop into mind as a software leader. Unlike Microsoft, which grew largely by internal growth, Symantec has made many acquisitions over the years. Software buyers are familiar with the Peter Norton line of utilities, ACT! Contact manager and Delrina's WinFax Pro fax management software, but may not know they're all Symantec products.

The original developers of these programs were purchased by Symantec because they offered great technology. But fitting all the technology pieces together in one company hasn't always been easy.

At the time of its acquisition, Delrina had over 600 employees, largely based in Toronto. A couple of years later, there's just 250 workers in Symantec Canada. Symantec says the decrease is largely due to the elimination of duplicate jobs in administration and marketing.

"We're making a shift from being a technology-driven company to a more customer/market-driven company. That is a hard thing for us as a company", said Siebert. "We have a very deep heritage in the Norton-branded products and we've been very technology-driven.

"We're trying to look at customer needs in key segments and see what we can do to really address products that are more customer needs-based. So start with the need and work towards the solution versus start with something that's neat technology and find a home for it."

In his new role, Siebert will concentrate on expanding the company's international business. He will also manage the worldwide transition of IBM customers to Norton AntiVirus. In May, IBM announced it had assigned its anti-virus customer contracts to Symantec.

According to Siebert, Symantec is now focusing its product lines on four main areas: 1) telecommuting and productivity tools for mobile workers; 2) software utilities for consumers; 3) small business; 4) security products.

One of the keys to Symantec's success has been the way it co-operates with Microsoft and tries not to compete head-on against the colossus.

For example, Symantec has provided basic versions of its anti-virus and fax software bundled with Microsoft products, such as Windows. Symantec counts on earning revenues from a certain proportion of users who want to upgrade to a more full-featured program.

Every copy of Microsoft Outlook 98 includes Symantec's WinFax Starter Edition. Users of the WinFax Starter Edition can easily upgrade to WinFax Pro 9.0 for more fax functions. Since WinFax Pro 9.0 is fully integrated with Outlook 98, users can receive faxes in either the Outlook 98 Inbox or WinFax Pro 9.0's Message Manager.

Over 15 million copies of WinFax Pro have been sold over the past nine years. The recently-released version 9.0 (list price $99 U.S.) includes new fax sharing capabilities designed for small networks with up to 25 users. This eliminates the need for every computer to have its own fax modem and telephone line for sending and receiving faxes.

There's also new send screen that makes it easier to compose, preview and edit a message before it is addressed and faxed. Multiple documents can be added or scanned into a single message and pages within a message can be reordered or deleted.

One of the hidden gems of a couple of earlier versions of WinFax Pro was a voice mail system. Symantec has now decided to roll this out as a separate product, TalkWorks Pro 2.0 (list price $149 U.S.).

TalkWorks includes all the features of WinFax Pro and is also suitable for managing voice mail for a small office of up to about five users. When it receives a voice mail message, TalkWorks can send a page or call your cellular phone to notify you.

There's also a fax on demand capability which allows customers to request and receive information via fax, 24 hours a day.

TalkWorks automatically logs all incoming and outgoing calls and faxes, even if the caller hangs up. If you subscribe to the phone company's Caller ID service, the program also tracks who called.

Later this month, Symantec will release Norton SystemWorks (list price $99.95 U.S.), an integrated suite of utility and anti-virus programs, including Norton Utilities, Norton AntiVirus, Norton Uninstall Deluxe, Norton CrashGuard and a six-month subscription to Norton Web Services.

SystemWorks helps solve or prevent many of the most nagging computer operating problems such as viruses, system crashes, lost data, software conflicts, slow or full hard drives, and out of date software.

The SystemWorks suite is 40 per cent less expensive than purchasing the individual program components. The integrated programs also work better together. For example, if Norton Utilities detects low disk space, Norton Uninstall will automatically remove unneeded files or programs. CW

Richard Morochove, FCA, is a Toronto-based computer consultant.

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