Symantec grand ambitions may be thwarted by Microsoft

Stan Beer
Monday, 09 October 2006 19:34

Opinion and Analysis

Any software company that can turn over US$1 billion a year can lay claim to being in the big league. Symantec, which turns over about US$5 billion and is the fourth largest software company in the world, is definitely a big league hitter. However, it wants to be much bigger.

• Announcements

Listening to reports of Symantec CEO John Thompson's address to the ETRE conference in Barcelona, one cannot help but be reminded of almost identical sentiments expressed by one Larry Ellison just one year ago at the Oracle OpenWorld conference.

John Thompson wants to transform Symantec from being a US$5 billion company to a US$10 billion company by 2010. A year earlier Larry Ellison expressed a desire to transform Oracle from a US$15 billion company to a US$30 billion company over much the same time frame.

From the looks of things, both companies want to achieve their objectives in much the same way, through strategic acquisitions.

It's almost as if Symantec's Thompson is using Oracle's Ellison as a role model. Oracle acquires PeopleSoft for US$10.3 billion. Symantec acquires Veritas for US$10.3 billion.

Oracle follows up with its Siebel acquisition. Symantec's Thompson says the company is interested in further acquisitions.

Oracle considers Microsoft as an adversary. Symantec, which is suing Microsoft over alleged misappropriation of intellectual property from Veritas, now considers Microsoft an adversary in the security space.

Thompson's Symantec is now fighting a very public battle with Microsoft on the European stage. The Symantec CEO knows that there is a big difference between his company and Oracle. Symantec is much more vulnerable to the ambitions of Microsoft entering its market space.

Thompson knows that if Microsoft is successful in leveraging Vista to cut Symantec out of the Windows security market, then Symantec can forget about being a US$10 billion company. It will have trouble staying a US$5 billion company.