Symantec Chief Aims to Reduce Complexity of Products, Be Easier to do Business With

LAS VEGAS – Symantec’s CEO, Steve Bennett, told a packed house during its own Vision 2013 conference, that his company is changing. His keynote presentation rehashed many of the new strategies that were discussed earlier this year, only now they were delivered with a sharp frankness to a room full of customers and potential customers.

Many in the audience reacted positively to Bennett’s assessment, which explained that while Symantec has great assets, such as people and technology, overall the company was underperforming. During his address, Bennett, who took over as CEO in July 2012, said Symantec “lacked strategy” when it came to dealing with their acquisitions. So the plan is for Symantec to change, and this change won’t be incremental, as that won’t work he said.

The plan is to move the company forward slowly, but consistently. This will enable Symantec to limit any negative side effects their customers and channel partners may feel by the changes themselves. Working with their partners, Bennett said that Symantec will focus strategy and operational planning on organic growth, and stick to developing new solutions, and retooling existing products that are able to solve their customer’s largest unmet, underserved needs.

In short, Bennett wants Symantec to be easier to do business with, while reducing the complexity of their products. To that end, he said that over the next 120 days, it should be expected that Symantec will announce partnerships with network providers, as the company will stick to focusing on the endpoint and the datacenter.

Additional details, as presented earlier this year, are available here. While the keynote itself didn’t offer anything “hot and groundbreaking” on the news front, it was refreshing to see such an honest assessment from a CEO to a crowd of customers.

His bottom line? We can do better, and we will. We have no other choice.