We are exploring compliance as a market: Symantec

While it's the much-bandied about cliché in the IT industry and the world of Gurus, for some it's a new window to generate, sustain and capitalize on business and market opportunities.

Symantec seems to be one such company avidly chasing the gravy train of innovation with a constantly rehashed portfolio, a packed NPD pipeline, and gargantuan R&D investments. Its centers of Innovation in Pune and Chennai that house more than 2,100 employees are reportedly working on high-end product development in the security, storage, availability and compliance domains.

But how does the word innovation and the initiatives under this umbrella translate on the ground for Symantec?

Pratima Harigunani of CyberMedia News speaks to Anil Chakravarthy, vice president, India Technical Operations, Symantec Corporation, to know more. Excerpts:

What is the relevance of innovation and how is applicable in the IT industry?

Innovation in the software industry is a philosophy and a tool that has applications across all tiers, be it the broader strategic layer or specific technologies or market segments. I classify innovation at five such levels – business model, delivery model, core technologies, standards and applications.

How can business models be constantly innovated?

Business model means how the software is sold. It has to be regularly diagnosed and checked for changes. This is where critical decisions of strategy are made and the same trickles down to other strata of business. Norton 360 for example, was typically sold as a licensed software. We changed it on three important aspects to innovate the model. First, not to sell the software on a CD but as SaaS (Software as a Service). Secondly, we experimented with the user base. Traditionally, software was aimed at power users i.e. people who want to fiddle with it but the market was huge than that segment. We wanted to go and touch the everyday user who may not essentially know the guts of a software. Thirdly, instead of focusing on security alone, we asked why do people invest in security products. We found that they are not so much worried about the latest security upgrade. What, they at the end of the day desire is a machine that keeps running. And that opened the door for complete PC Health. Online back-up and all-round security thus became new additions. You will see the same reflected in the next version of Norton 360.

Has the experiment worked?

SaaS was introduced six months back. Norton crossed the one million user mark in the first quarter itself and a lot of this can be attributed to SaaS.

How does innovation reflect on the side of delivery model?

Security as an industry is not static and threats keep changing all the while. In Live up data, we have separated the engine from the intelligence. The engine goes as part of the software, which will go back to Symantec server. The intelligence is then constantly updated and is downloadable in the form of a program. For over 200 million users, we have hence changed delivery. We won't have to ship the product to them again and again with every new threat upgrade.

Can you give more examples of how you are innovating on fronts like applications, standards and core technologies?

On the applications side we are exploring compliance as a market that is suddenly opening up. This was not the case four to five years back. Our product System Administrator, for instance as been adapted as a control compliance suite. Earlier, its target audience was the system administrator, now it's the CIO. We did something similar with 'Enterprise Vault' that was initially just for email archiving, but has now increased its scope to all kind of document search and analysis. It's now been rechristened as 'Discovery'.

We are working on identity management on the fronts of standards. As far as core technologies go, we already have a line-up of work in storage and security. Cluster file system was one such technology developed out of India. We are also working with Intel on chip-level security.

Does innovation also apply in scripting and wielding new competitive strategies?

That is a cumulative of all the strategies discussed above. But we keep customer in mind first. Having a one-up at the competition might not serve him. One extra feature is not a differentiator strong enough. It's not easy though. When one reads news from competition, the natural instinct of delivering a one-up is there, but one has to keep the focus clear.

Is innovation as glamorous as it sounds?

Innovation is not that easy. What we have learnt so far is that it does not come out some ivory tower where you pack a bunch of people or experts and ask them to brainstorm and deliver a 'Eureka' idea. A lot of innovation is incremental and on mundane areas like reliability, workability and usability. Not every innovation is a candidate for Nobel Prize but they make a huge difference to products.

What is the role of Symantec’s India operations in innovations?

Innovation essentially comes from people, their problems, opportunities that they deal with. It's all about sharing knowledge. In India, we have recently initiated two programs 'Anchors' & 'TechWiz'. 'Anchors' has been founded on an Appreciative Enquiry Framework model, which revolves around employees who have been at Symantec for five years or more. 'TechWiz' has been rolled out by the India CTO office to recognize contributions to technical activities in Symantec beyond the boundaries of normal or routine work. The basic idea is to award tech points to individuals for various technical activities, which can later be redeemed. These points also accumulate over time and serve as a measure for the total extra-curricular technical contribution of a person. Together both these initiatives have received a very positive response from the employees and have contributed significantly toward creating the environment of positive competitiveness among the techies at Symantec. India is contributing significantly to R&D worldwide.

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