Symantec 2014 Annual Report Download - page 88

We did not make any material acquisitions during fiscal 2014.
Competition
Our markets are consolidating, highly competitive, and subject to rapid changes in technology. The
competitive landscape has changed significantly over the past few years, with new competition arising. Much of
the market growth has come from startups whose focus is on solving a specific customer issue or delivering a
specific niche-oriented product and from larger integration providers that increasingly are looking to put various
types of protection, whether it is backup, high availability or security, into their platforms. We are focused on
delivering comprehensive customer solutions, integrating across our broad product portfolio and partnering with
other technology providers to differentiate ourselves from the competition. We believe that the principal
competitive factors necessary to be successful in our industry include product quality and effectiveness, time-to-
market, price, reputation, financial stability, breadth of product offerings, customer support, brand recognition,
and effective sales and marketing efforts.
In addition to the competition we face from direct competitors, we face indirect or potential competition
from retailers, application providers, operating system providers, network equipment manufacturers, and other
OEMs who may provide various solutions and functions in their current and future products. We also compete
for access to retail distribution channels and for spending at the retail level and in corporate accounts. In addition,
we compete with other software companies, operating system providers, network equipment manufacturers, and
other OEMs to acquire technologies, products, or companies and to publish software developed by third parties.
We also compete with other software companies in our effort to place our products on the computer equipment
sold to consumers and enterprises by OEMs.
The competitive environments for our security and management products are described below.
Security
Most of the channels in which our security products are offered are highly competitive. Some of our consumer
competitors are intensely focused on customer acquisition, which has led competitors to offer their technology for
free, engage in aggressive marketing, or enter into competitive partnerships. Our primary security competitors are
McAfee, Inc., owned by Intel Corporation, Microsoft Corporation (“Microsoft”), and Trend Micro Inc. There are
also several freeware providers and regional security companies that we compete against. For our consumer backup
offerings, our primary competitors are Carbonite, Inc. and Mozy, Inc., owned by EMC Corporation (“EMC”). In the
authentication services market, our primary competitors are Comodo Group, Inc., RSA, the security division of
EMC, Entrust, Inc., and GoDaddy.com, Inc. In the Software-as-a-Service (“SaaS”) security market, our primary
competitors are Google Inc.’s Postini Services and Microsoft. Our primary competitors in the managed services
business are SecureWorks, Inc., owned by Dell, Inc., and Verizon Communications, Inc.
Information Management
The markets for storage management, backup, archiving, and eDiscovery are intensely competitive. Our
primary competitors are CommVault Systems, Inc., EMC, Hewlett-Packard Company, IBM, Oracle, and Veeam
Software.
Intellectual Property
Protective Measures
We regard some of the features of our internal operations, software, and documentation as proprietary and rely
on copyright, patent, trademark and trade secret laws, confidentiality procedures, contractual arrangements, and
other measures to protect our proprietary information. Our intellectual property is an important and valuable asset
that enables us to gain recognition for our products, services, and technology and enhance our competitive position.
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