Symantec 2007 Annual Report Download - page 10

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PART I
Item 1. Business
Symantec is a global leader in infrastructure software, enabling businesses and consumers to have confidence
in a connected world. We help our customers protect their infrastructure, information, and interactions by delivering
software and services that address risks to information security, availability, compliance, and information tech-
nology, or IT, systems performance. We strive to help our customers manage compliance, complexity, and cost by
protecting their IT infrastructure as they seek to maximize value from their IT investments.
We deliver a comprehensive and diverse set of security and availability products and services to large
enterprises, governments, small and medium-sized businesses, and consumers on a worldwide basis. Our delivery
network includes direct, inside, and channel sales resources that support our ecosystem of more than 50,000 partners
worldwide, as well as various relationships with original equipment manufacturers, or OEMs, Internet service
providers, or ISPs, and retail and online stores. We operate in three geographic regions: Americas, which includes
North America, Canada, and Latin America; EMEA, which includes Europe, Middle East and Africa; and Asia
Pacific Japan.
We operate primarily in two growing, diversified markets within the software sector: the security market and
the storage software market. The security market includes products that protect consumers and enterprises from
threats to personal computers, or PCs, computer networks, and electronic information. The storage software market
includes products that manage, archive, protect, and recover business-critical data. We believe that these markets
are converging as customers increasingly require our help in mitigating their risk profiles and managing their
storage solutions in order to safeguard their IT infrastructure, information, and interactions.
In the ever-changing threat landscape and increasingly complex IT environment for consumers and enterprises
alike, we believe product differentiation will be the key to sustaining market leadership. Thus, we continually work
to enhance the features and functionality of our existing products, extend our product leadership, and create
innovative solutions for our customers. We focus on generating profitable and sustainable growth through internal
research and development, licensing from third parties, and acquisitions of companies with leading technologies.
During fiscal 2007, we took the following actions to support our business:
• We developed and launched several new products and integrated new feature functionality into new versions
of products, some of which include: Norton 360
TM
, Norton Internet Security
TM
2007, Norton Confidential
TM
,
Veritas Storage Foundation
TM
5.0, Veritas Cluster Server
TM
5.0, NetBackup
TM
6.0, Symantec Information
Foundation
TM
2007, Backup Exec
TM
11d, and Symantec
TM
Security Information Manager. Customers are
leveraging our broader product portfolio to help them solve the cost, complexity, and compliance issues for
their IT environments.
• We expanded our services offerings to provide enterprise customers with an extended range of infrastructure
management options that incorporates best practice and improves IT risk management.
• We merged the Symantec and Veritas enterprise sales forces into one integrated sales team. This structure
allows better account and opportunity coverage, while leveraging our broad product portfolio.
• We consolidated two enterprise resource planning, or ERP, systems into a single enhanced system and
implemented a new buying program in order to drive operational efficiencies and create a platform from
which we can work to improve the ease of transacting business with our customers.
• We consolidated three of our enterprise business segments into two segments and now operate in five
operating segments. During fiscal 2008, we will also operate in a new segment consisting of our Altiris
business, which was acquired in April 2007, and we will realign some of our existing segments. See Note 15
of the Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements for more information.
• In January 2007, we announced plans to reduce our cost structure in order to better align expenses with
revenue expectations, which included a workforce reduction of approximately five percent worldwide. Once
4