The John Thompson era is over at Symantec, and new CEO Enrique Salem (pictured) is striving to give channel partners peace of mind as Symantec marches forward. With that goal in mind, Salem has dispatched a letter to partners. The letter contains trusted IT advisor jargon — verbiage The VAR Guy typically avoids. But, let’s give Salem credit here. He is wise to show some love to Symantec’s channel. Take a look.
Sure, Salem took some heat for mid-2008 comments involving the channel and Wall Street. But that seems like a lifetime ago. Salem received upbeat feedback during the company’s Symantec Partner Engage event in October 2008. And now, he’s calling all the shots as Symantec’s CEO.
In addition to pointing out Symantec’s continued reliance on partners, the letter reinforces Salem’s 16-year tenure at Symantec. Translation: Symantec wants to position Salem as a new leader who also has inside experience across Symantec. Here’s the complete letter from Salem to Symantec’s channel.
Dear Partners,
I’m energized by my new role as Symantec’s Chief Executive Officer and the opportunities that we have to be successful together. Symantec’s partners are our most vital sales channel and we’re committed to helping you continue to increase your revenue, grow your business and stay relevant with your customers.
Today’s business environment is very different than anything I’ve seen over the course of my 16 years with Symantec. But even during these challenging times, customers still have critical information that needs to be secured and with the amount of information doubling every two year, so are their storage needs. Together, we need to focus on providing solutions that help our customers reduce costs and minimize risk and deliver a near-term return on investment.
Information is what matters most to our customers and from a technology perspective, our first priority is investing more in security—helping our customers protect their critical information. We will focus on delivering enhancements to our market-leading data loss prevention, endpoint protection and compliance solutions. You’ll also see us working to bring our products together into integrated security suites that deliver more comprehensive protection.
We will also focus more on delivering next-generation backup and recovery solutions and we’ll continue to develop new technologies to simplify complexity for our customers. You should look for continued innovations from us in the areas of data deduplication, continuous data protection and virtualization support.
We want to be your most strategic vendor partner. We want to help you continue to be your customer’s most trusted IT advisor. That means we’ll continue to innovate when it comes to products and services and we’ll provide you with programs and incentives that not only increase your bottom line, but open up new business opportunities for you. Symantec will also take the steps necessary to drive tighter alignment in the field and reduce channel conflict.
You are critical to our success. As CEO, my focus will be on delivering on commitments to you and keeping the communications lines open. We want to know what you’re thinking and we’ll keep you updated on our progress and priorities.
Working together to help a customer solve a complex problem, saving them money, building a strong relationship—that’s success, that’s winning. Together, we can do great things.
Enrique
Again, the letter was a smart move by Salem and/or the Symantec insider who pulled it together.The VAR Guy is updated multiple times daily. Don’t miss a single post. Subscribe to his newsletter, RSS feed, Twitter feed , Webcasts and Resource Center.
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Dear Norton, Hi folks. I am pleased I was able to find a real phone# for customer support and simply to speak to someone to have questions answered. A computer is not always the best way to speak with some one, especially if one has a limiting disability as to time and sitting and
looking at a computer screen. I have a norton product and as i looked in the manual to simply find a phone number to ask questions on a future product to buy of Norton for my wife, I found it to be this annoying quest, sorry! a circus act to log in here go there and do this.
One wonders if Norton questions to stand behind it own product. ( I said one wonders because if I need to speak with samsung, kodak, Mac/Apple
HP, Lexmark,Toshiba,or Westinghouse and Pioneer even in years later I call the same number and they work and I am talking to a live person.
If a persons computer is down and needs assistance (Loyalty to buy your product) they may very well not be able to via with Norton by computer.
so why if you want to be the best in customer support be so allusive with phone numbers or be it necessary to even ever charge a customer for service.
When you charge for service you are losing that same recommitment of your customers return purchase.
I write to this fact , I hope Norton takes a good look at its competitors Bitdefender whom had said they have surpassed Norton, with credits
as PC World Magazine and so on.
The truth Bitdefender is totally deplorable on contacting them and there for I will not buy there product, There weakness to stand behind there own product FOR A SIMPLE PHONE NUMBER IS NORTON’S STRENGTH. Your Public Relations would do much better to use that fact. If there’s enough structure to sell a product there ought to be responsibility
to service that product and answers to its public that buy it.
Sincerely, John McDonald
Norton is impossible to deal with it is like talking to a brick wall at the end of an ally. They have designed it that way. but people who deel on the internet take warning their methods of taking money then hiding behind walls will only add to the dimminishing trust of shopping on the web. take note Norton are affecting you all with their sharp practices