Comments on: The black lining to Symantec's silver cloud

CEO John Thompson has tried to make the security software company less dependent on the volatile consumer market and more reliant on stable corporate revenue. The proof will be in the fourth-quarter results this week.

Symantec More Than Anti-virus Company

The writer's opinion of Symantec's future is somewhat biased in that long-time customers and stock holders like myself purchase an array of Symantec products--because they consistently beat competitor products in service and quality.
Of recent, several analysts and writers have 'hinted strongly' that SYMC (stock symbol) is headed downward.
Yesterday (4-26-04) Moors and Cabot institued coverage of SYMC with a Sell recommendation and a target of $40.
Stockholders yesterday rejected their opinion driving SYMC 0.63 higher. This is not the first time stockholders have sent a very strong message to Wall Street Doomsayers.
SYMC has a more than healthy cache of cash and consistently buys and/or partners with companies having products that 'enhance' or improve SYMC products.
My 34 percent gain over the past two years with SYMC seems to support my ascertion.

Symantec At Fault

I have bought a couple of corporate products from Symantec (Norton A/V), and they never follow-up on renewals. They have no process (at least with customers of my size) to track or invoice for renewals. I continue to use NAV 8.0 and 8.5 because it works and no one has bothered to ask me to upgrade.

If you ignore your installed base, then you are the source of your own dilemma. Great product, probably with remarkably low churn, but an ignored and wasted potential revenue source.

Symantec Problems with business sales

I am an IT manager for a small businees 10+ employees.

I just finished installing "Symantec Corporate Ant-Virus Software" .

For a small busines this is too complicated to install & configure. A menu comes up with 2 sub-menus with no hint of the sequence to install the modules.

After the modules are installed there is no hint where the modules are to be configured.

This is madness! There should be a one button installation & then a a sequence of configurtion windows for each module with default settings for most systems.

Small busineses IT people are not full time & do not have the time to read thick manuals or pages of Adobe pdf files & try to figure out what the settings should be & if they do not GUESS RIGHT! the system is at risk!

Symantec doesn't support all it's products

I always update my virus definitions and when my subscription expires I renew it. Since december my virus definitions are corupted and I can't update it. My subscription is paid up untill July. The version I have which I paid to renew, Symantec no longer supports. I can buy a new virus product from them, but it doesn't seem right that they won't even prorate the product I have. I chose to go with a competor and will never buy andother Symantec product again untill they change their policy.