Symantec to open liaison office in India

Symantec Corporation, best known for its Norton range of

security and utility products, will establish a liaison office in India before September.

The move is necessitated to support a new corporate product--the Digital Immune System

(DIS)--that the company will launch in September.

Symantec's liaison office will be located in Mumbai and

will house sales and support staff. "We are recruiting staff and looking for space at

the moment. We will have five staff by year-end. The office will become operational as

soon as we appoint a country head," revealed Kerrie-Anne Turner, Sales and Marketing

Manager, South East Asia, Symantec.

The office will provide service and support to corporate

DIS clients. "The DIS is an environment where corporations can, like an immune

system, contain viruses and protect themselves against viruses in the most efficient way

possible. It is a collection of best of breed applications that can be installed and

managed from a single console," explained Ligh Costin. The company claims that the

DIS offers the lowest total cost of ownership for an anti virus solution, translating into

a reduction in real cost from between $50,000 to $500,000 per year. The DIS is an amalgam

of Symantec's own products and anti virus technologies that the company acquired from IBM

and Intel. In May 1998, Symantec licensed IBM's immune system technology and in September

purchased Intel's anti virus business and licensed Intel's systems management technology

with a view to combine them with its own products.

The DIS will be launched in a phased manner. Version 1.0

will be launched in September and will essentially be a managed anti virus solution built

on top of Norton AntiVirus Corporate Edition. It will address the core virus threat. The

first version will run on DOS, all flavors of MS Windows including the yet to be released

Windows 2000 and Novell. The second version, scheduled to be available in the first half

of 2000, will include pcANYWHERE for remote connectivity and disk utilities like Speed

Disk and Norton Ghost. In addition, a version will be offered on the Tivoli enterprise

system management platform.

The company will charge for DIS on a per-seat license

basis. Apart from setting up the liaison office, Symantec is building and educating its

channel network in anticipation of the launch.