Symantec adds Messagelabs to Christmas shopping basket

Symantec to acquire MessageLabs, bolster SaaS
by David M Williams Thursday, 09 October 2008

Symantec Corporation, producer of the popular Symantec Anti-Virus corporate suite and of the less-than-popular Norton consumer product, has today announced its intention to acquire global e-mail-filtering company MessageLabs. The move signals Symantec's growth as a provider of SaaS. Symantec has been on the acquisition trail for several years with other notable purchases being Veritas - of backup fame - and Altiris - known for their enterprise network management and help-desk suite.
MessageLabs differs from the products Symantec is best known for due to its Software as a Service (SaaS) model. That is, MessageLabs requires no infrastructure or maintenance within your network save to redirect your incoming mail to hit their servers, not your own.
The MessageLabs machinery scrubs and cleans your inbound e-mail stream, delivering a spam- and virus-free feed to your corporate mail server.
MessageLabs report their customers include major financial institutions and legal firms as well as governments.
Additional MessageLabs services include a web proxy element and e-mail archiving.
In one sense MessageLabs was a competitor to Symantec's existing mail security product. Yet, the acquisition appears little to do with shutting down a competitor and more about bolstering Symantec's overall presence in the growing cloud space.
The CEO of MessageLabs, Adrian Chamberlain, said the interest by Symantec proved MessageLab's SaaS model worked and that the company was a leader in its field.
Chamberlain stated at the close of the acquisition Symantec would launch a new SaaS arm which combined MessageLabs and the existing Symantec solutions for online storage, online backup and remote access. This new arm will be lead by the MessageLabs management team thus giving their division a stronger product from day one.
The purchase price will be $USD 695 million but at this time the expected completion date has not been advised, no doubt with due diligence still in progress.

Messagelabs Link

Symantec is expanding is's business but downsizing its workforce.

Seeing Tough Times Ahead, Symantec Plans Layoffs
Robert McMillan, IDG News ServiceThursday, October 30, 2008 6:10 PM PDT

Anticipating a slowdown in IT spending, Symantec expects to begin laying off employees next month.
Symantec isn't saying exactly how many jobs it will cut, but on Wednesday Chief Financial Officer James Beer said that the company is looking to trim about 4.5 percent of the cost of its workforce. Separately, Symantec is also outsourcing some of the work done by its IT and finance departments, he said during a conference call with financial analysts.
Symantec has not yet determined how many cuts it will make to its workforce of 17,800 employees, but the layoffs will affect staff in all regions, said Cris Paden, a company spokesman. "We'll be notifying employees next month," he said.
On Nov. 1, Hewlett-Packard's EDS division will start taking over some of the company's IT operations, and IT and finance employees will be moved off the company payroll over the next 12 months, Paden said. Those reductions have been planned for months, and are separate from the cuts announced Wednesday.
Symantec's stock [SYMC] dropped nearly 18 percent Thursday on the company's sober economic outlook and its reduced earnings expectations.
Starting in the last weeks of September, Symantec saw some "hesitation from some of our customers when it came to finalizing commitments," Beer said in an interview.
"We did see some pulling back," he added. "It was an effect that we saw in different parts of our customer base around the world."