Symantec 2008 Annual Report Download - page 3

DEAR FELLOW STOCKHOLDERS,
Fiscal 2008 was a very successful year for Symantec, as demonstrated by our solid performance
against key financial metrics. In addition to strong revenue and earnings growth, we also
achieved significant deferred revenue and cash flow generation results.
We believe we are positioned for even stronger performance in fiscal year 2009 based on three
key strategic pillars:
• A Clear Growth Path. Symantec’s strategy — to secure and manage our customers’ infor-
mation-driven world — positions us to leverage existing strengths into new opportunities, while
also capitalizing on emerging industry growth needs.
• Delivering on the Promise of Innovation. Symantec is successfully innovating through a
combination of organic development, strategic acquisitions, and strong technology
partnerships.
• Day-In, Day-Out Execution. Symantec’s focus on execution is clearly demonstrated by our
internal actions and our ongoing financial results.
2008 — A SOLID YEAR
Throughout fiscal year 2008, we made significant progress towards our goal of cross-selling and
up-selling an expanded portfolio of Symantec’s products and services to both new and existing
customers. In addition, important adjustments made in our sales and marketing programs, as
well as improved execution, fueled more than 1,500 large deals during the year.
We fortified our position at the endpoint with the addition of Altiris and Vontu. The combination of
Symantec and Altiris allows our customers to better manage and enforce security policies at the
endpoint, identify and protect against threats, remediate vulnerabilities, and manage valuable IT
assets. With Vontu, we give our customers the ability to determine what data they should protect
and how they should protect it. These transactions represent a natural extension of our security
strategy — that the most secure endpoint is a well managed endpoint.
We launched innovative new products in segments of the market where we already hold strong
leadership positions. For example, we added disk based backup to our market leading data
protection products and introduced enterprise storage management to our foundation platform,
enabling more efficient use of storage resources. We also created a single software agent for
addressing multiple security threats on the enterprise endpoint. Lastly, we introduced online
backup to both consumers and enterprises. In total, we exited the fiscal year with the strongest
product portfolio we’ve ever had.
A strong product portfolio, however, will deliver less value if we don’t focus on the fundamentals to
successfully manage the business. The operational improvements made throughout the year
should yield better bottom-line performance. I’m pleased to report that we were able to better
manage our cost structure and delivered on our long-term objective of improving operating
margins by 100 basis points per year. Symantec secures and manages the information-driven
world against more risks at more points, more completely and efficiently than any other company.
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