The VAR Guy

When Symantec announces quarterly results on April 30, The VAR Guy will be listening closely. Our resident blogger was a big advocate of the 2005 Symantec-Veritas business combo. But so far, that merger has yielded mixed results. Here is one key piece of info The VAR Guy will be digging for as he looks through Symantec’s financial results.

Question: What’s the State of Symantec Protection Network?

In December 2007, The VAR Guy predicted Symantec would become the next Software as a Service (SaaS) giant. So far, that prediction seems far too optimistic.

Storage and security are two of the hottest software-as-a-service (SaaS) opportunities on the planet. Yet Symantec’s big SaaS platform — the Symantec Protection Network — has generated little fanfare since launching earlier this year.

Initially, SPN supports storage. Security capabilities are coming later this year. A few managed service providers tell me they’re interested in SPN. But there doesn’t seem to be much “buzz” about Symantec and SaaS or cloud computing. At least not yet…

Is The VAR Guy wrong? Is SPN building momentum? Or will there be a slow build toward mass adoption? The VAR Guy is all ears.

Update 3/29, 9:40am eastern: AP is speculating that Symantec may sell off some of its under-performing business units.