Symantec has confirmed that it is to divide its business into two separate divisions.
In a statement, the security giant said that it will split into two, independent publicly traded companies. One will be focused solely on security and be run by President and CEO Michael Brown, the second will be focused on information management and be run by John Gannon. Gannon previously ran HP’s commercial PC business.
It said that the decision follows an extensive business review of the company’s strategy and operational structure, and the two standalone businesses will maximise its each “respective growth opportunities and drive greater shareholder value”.
The security division will focus on delivering a unified security platform to integrate threat information from the Symantec and Norton products to generate more intelligence and telemetry, and integrate this threat information in a big data platform for superior threat analysis.
It will also grow its cyber security service capabilities across managed security, incident response, threat adversary intelligence and simulation-based training for security professionals, and simplify and integrate its security products portfolio by consolidating Norton into one offering. This will also see it extend its advanced threat protection and data leak prevention capabilities into more of its products.
The first offering in this series will be an ATP threat defense gateway that Symantec expects to introduce by the end of the year.
The Information Business will focus on on-premise software, integrated appliances or in the cloud, focus on storage and help customers reduce the unmanaged proliferation of redundant and unused data, and enable visibility, management, and control across an organization’s entire information landscape through an intelligent information fabric layer that integrates with its portfolio and third-party ecosystems.
Brown, who was appointed as CEO in September, said: “As the security and storage industries continue to change at an accelerating pace, Symantec’s security and IM businesses each face unique market opportunities and challenges.
“It has become clear that winning in both security and information management requires distinct strategies, focused investments and go-to market innovation. Taking this decisive step will enable each business to maximize its potential. Both businesses will have substantial operational and financial scale to thrive.”
