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Story URL: http://www.silicon.com/research/specialreports/idmanagement/0,3800011361,39158770,00.htm

Symantec eyes up ID management space
It's "an area of great interest to our company", says CEO

By Joris Evers

Published: Tuesday 09 May 2006

Looking for further expansion, Symantec is considering delving into identity management, encryption and a range of managed services, the security giant's chief said on Monday.

Symantec CEO John Thompson mentioned those fields as areas the company is interested in as it tries to become a single-source supplier for management of data centres and protection of data and online transactions.

During the opening keynote address at the company's annual Vision conference in San Francisco, Thompson said: "In a world that is more compliance-oriented, [identity management] is a critical part of the stack. Today we embrace the technologies that other companies bring to the market. We are not at this moment in the identity management business but it is an area of great interest to our company."

Right now, Symantec is not a player in the identity management market, which is led by CA, HP, IBM and Oracle and which research company IDC predicts will grow to almost $4bn in the next three years. Typically, the software identifies the users of a system and controls their access to resources within that system by associating rights and restrictions with a particular identity.

An advance into that market is a logical step for Symantec, said Andy Buss, an analyst at Canalys. "If you're going to do enterprise security, you need to be able to secure access to your networks and applications," he said.

It also fits nicely with Symantec's stated goal of becoming an IT services management company, Buss added.

The motivation behind offering more encryption capabilities is similar. Symantec's back-up products offer limited encryption features but security breach laws passed by several US states are driving demand for more, Thompson said in response to a question from an audience member.

Thompson said Symantec was considering adding managed services for back-ups, data archiving and email. The company has recognised the growing popularity of hosted services, he said.

In response to an audience question, he said: "The success of Salesforce.com delivers to the forefront the notion that users want to subscribe. Today we deliver a managed security service. We think there is a logic extension to managed back-ups, managed archiving and managed mail."

Symantec plans to focus its managed email services on instant messaging and VoIP through its partnership with MX Logic, and will aim its back-up and archiving services at small businesses, said Jeremy Burton, a senior vice president of enterprise security and data management for Symantec.

Burton added: "We will broaden the partnership with MX Logic to incorporate email and managed services, and deliver mail security software over the web. Delivering back-up and archiving solutions we will focus on the SME market."

Symantec has expanded significantly over the past years, with eight acquisitions since the start of last year, including those of BindView, IM Logic, Relicore, Sygate, Veritas Software and WholeSecurity. But the company is keeping its options open as it looks to broaden its business, Thompson said.

In a meeting with reporters after his keynote presentation, he said: "You should not interpret those comments [to mean] that we're going to go out and buy an identity management or an encryption company." Symantec may acquire the technology but it might also develop it in-house or partner with others, he said.

Still, Thompson said, it is "unlikely that we're going to be very active in all of those spaces in the near term".

ZDNet UK's Tom Espiner contributed to this report

Joris Evers writes for CNET News.com