New Symantec to hire, not fire, says new Pacific region chief

By Stuart Finlayson

The widespread culling of jobs that often occurs in the aftermath of a large-scale merger is not going to happen at Symantec, revealed senior company executives who were outlining the go-forward plans for the company following the completion of its multi-billion dollar merger with Veritas.

Indeed, according to David Sykes, newly installed VP of the Pacific region, quite the opposite is true, with plans afoot for the company to increase their workforce in every area across the Asia Pacific area.

"This is a scope deal, not a scale deal. We are out there looking to grow and we have more open requisitions for headcount that ever before. In fact, we intend to net hire in every country we operate in across the globe."

John Donovan, former managing director of Symantec Australia, who has now been made VP of Channels for Asia Pacific and Japan, said the distinct lack of overlap between the two company's offerings removed the need to make redundancies.

"We have actually been crying out for more sales staff for some time, as have our equivalents at Veritas, so this has presented us with a great opportunity to increase our team."

Uniting those staff is one of Sykes' most immediate aims. "Our top priority at the moment is to get the sales team together as quickly as possible," said Sykes, who added that retaining staff, maintaining momentum and targeting opportunities were also of paramount importance to the company in the coming months.

Donovan said the initial integration phase has gone remarkably smoothly, thanks in no small part to the man at the helm. "Our CEO, John Thomson has done a terrific job in directing the entire merger process. The fact that Symantec and Veritas were very similar culturally has also helped a great deal."

Product-wise, the number one priority for the new entity is to get Symantec's live Update technology built into Veritas' enterprise back-up software.

"We will also be focusing heavily on email integration in phase one of our roadmap, covering the next six months."

Both executives said that the focus would be on bundling in the first instance, with the timeframe for new, jointly-developed products to appear on the market at least 12 to 18 months away.

Commenting on the convergence between information security and information availability, Sykes said the new company was perfectly placed to capitalise. "It's one thing to be able to see this convergence happen – it's quite another to get in at the front of that curve. That is where we are."

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