The Hindu Business Line : Symantec targets $10 b revenue by 2010

Symantec, which acquired about six companies during the past year (with Veritas being the biggest), has set for itself the target of "10x10x10". Speaking to newspersons, Mr Greg Hughes, Executive Vice- President (Worldwide Services and Support), said that the company was looking at $10 billion in revenue by 2010 and 10 per cent of the revenues to come in from professional services.

The professional services comprise three sectors - consulting, education and critical services. Currently, the contribution from this segment is only about five percent (it was only about two per cent a couple of years ago). He added that for the last quarter, revenues had touched $60 million.

He also said that there were about 1,000 people in the professional services headcount in the organisation, of which about 300 are located in Pune. The company is looking at a target of about 4,000 personnel in this segment.

Increasing threat

Mr Hughes said that many organisations are facing an increasing amount of security threat that could impact their environment, jeopardise compliance and threaten their entire business.

It has become essential for managers and administrators to be equipped with the necessary tools and information so that they are able to assess their current security and a process for responding to ongoing threats.

The Harvard Business Review in October 2005 had said that ever since the Y2K scare, boards have grown increasingly nervous about corporate dependence on IT.

Since then, computer crashes, denial of service attacks, competitive pressures and the need to automate compliance with Government regulations have heightened board sensitivity to IT risk.

Boards in the dark

Unfortunately, most boards remain largely in the dark when it comes to IT spending and strategy, despite the fact that corporate information assets can account for more than 50 per cent of capital spending.

On the Pune operations, Mr Hughes said that the company has begun the rollout of the rotation programme for engineers.

These engineers would be posted at the site of the customers and since they have the technical knowledge, would be able to understand the difficulties better and look at options where Symantec could make a contribution.