Партнеры Symantec разочарованы

[Иван 290]

Партнеры Symantec разочарованы

В скором времени Symantec может не досчитаться значительного числа своих партнеров, если не приложит максимум усилий для усовершенствования собственных продуктов. Наибольших нареканий за последние пару месяцев удостоилось одно из ключевых приложений компании – Antivirus Corporate Edition. По словам поставщиков, их клиенты стали чаще замечать проблемы в работе информационных систем, защищенных корпоративным антивирусом от Symantec – то программы зависают, то производительность компьютеров падает ниже критической отметки. В результате кое-кто уже вынужден отключать антивирус на машинах пользователей. Напасти начались с версии 9.0, когда Antivirus Corporate Edition расширился средствами борьбы со шпионскими модулями и прочими зловредными программами. С тех пор жалобы на то, что антивирус потребляет чересчур много системных ресурсов и заваливает корпоративные приложения, потекли рекой. Теперь же, к десятой версии продукта, недовольство клиентов достигло своего апогея. К уже звучавшим претензиям добавилась еще одна: антивирус не справляется со своими прямыми обязанностями и пропускает заразу во внутрифирменные сети. В ответ на наезды Symantec ничего не осталось, как пообещать коренным образом исправить ситуацию по выходу Antivirus Corporate Edition версии 11, релиз которой намечен на осень текущего года. Однако, согласятся ли ждать партнеры и клиенты, вот в чем вопрос.

http://www.computery.ru/news/news.php?nid=...ge_pl_news472=5

http://www.crn.com/security/199000187?queryText=symantec

http://www.crn.com/security/199201368?queryText=symantec

[Сергей Ильин 1538]

Из русского текста ничего не понятно, собственно в чем суть разочарований? Обратимся к первоисточнику.

Основной посыл статьи http://www.crn.com/security/199000187?queryText=symantec

Is Symantec still a security vendor?

The question is: Can Symantec wait that long? "A bloated memory hog that breaks more applications than it protects" is how some solution providers and end users describe the current version of Symantec Antivirus Corporate Edition. "It's a resource hog, and I'm telling my clients not to use it—to replace it with something else," one VAR says. "Customers are always complaining about slow computers."

Both Trend Micro and McAfee report taking customers and solution providers away from Symantec. They attribute their gains to a combination of problems, not the least of which is the performance of Symantec's products. Symantec's recent migration to a new ERP system has made doing business with the vendor difficult. The quality of technical support has ebbed, some say. And its focus on storage products has some solution providers wondering if the security side of the house is even a priority anymore.

While Symantec has slipped in the antivirus realm, Trend Micro is seeing competitive displacement among large customers, tremendous opportunity among midsize companies and open-field prospects in the small-business market.

"The growth of [symantec's] organization is displacing what the customers need," says Dave Dickison, senior vice president of North America channels at McAfee. "The partners don't have as much loyalty as they once had."

While Parrish doesn't deny that competitors are capitalizing on Symantec's pain, she won't provide specifics as to whether there are losses. "We're not seeing any changes to our overall order flow, but we have heard about some partners switching orders," she says. "It's hard to know if the switch is permanent or whether they've switched and will come back."

------------------------

Symantec is mum on how it plans to improve Symantec Antivirus Corporate Edition, but both McAfee and Trend Micro have been vocal about their product road maps. McAfee plans to integrate its series of acquisitions into one risk-management suite. As Dickison explains, ePolicy Orchestrator will be the umbrella under which Foundstone's vulnerability management application, Citadel's patch management software, Onigma's data loss prevention and IntruVert intrusion prevention technology will holistically reside.

Trend Micro added reputational analysis technology acquired from Kalkea to the latest version of OfficeScan, which will identify and block hostile Web sites before they infect a client with malware.

------------------------

Parrish, a former Veritas executive, doesn't deny there are problems, rattling off a laundry list of them—order processing, license key activations, support quality—that are being fixed. But she knows that Symantec must do a better job of communicating with solution providers.

What is Symantec doing about technology problems in its primary antivirus engine? Brian Fuller, the company's director of endpoint security, says the next version of Symantec AV engine will feature compressed signatures that significantly decrease host performance hits. Users will be able to slow the scanning process, which will decrease processing demands but extend malware inspection times.

But the summer's still a long way off, and there are still scores of issues to address. Solution providers can only hope that the yellow-clad vendor wakes up and starts talking about what it's going to do for them and their customers.

***********************

Суммирую все вышесказанное: Symantec Antivirus Corporate Edition очень медленный, но компания не сообщает о планах его улучшения, остается ждать новую версию 11, которая выйдет не раньше осени.

В тоже время McAfee и особенно Trend Micro не стоят на месте, все это серьезно угрожает положению Symantec в корпоративном секторе. Тема "большего передела" вновь актуальна :-)

[Иван 290]

Volatility and opportunity may return to the antivirus market as yet another alternative vendor takes aim at market leaders Symantec and McAfee.

Sophos, the British-based security company, is going 100 percent indirect in an effort to increase its sales reach in North America and deliver more of its highly regarded antivirus products, as well as a spate of antispam, gateway malicious code and network access control technologies.

"It's a very aggressive evolution of the company and we've vocal about moving down the path against our main rivals, Symantec and McAfee," says Mark Hatton, the company's North America president.

"Roughly 50 percent of end users in the next two years are looking for an alternative on the endpoint," he continues. "We're not looking to lose opportunities to Kasperksy Labs and Panda Software; we're winning accounts that are the hallmark of Symantec."

Over the past several months, Symantec has struggled with a long list of product, channel and technical support problems that have disenfranchised solution providers and end users. Many have called Symantec Antivirus Corporate Edition "a resource hog" that's ineffective compared to competitors. A recent botched ERP transition only amplified frustrations by making it more difficult for solution providers to order products and licenses.

Symantec is well aware of its channel and technical problems. In previous interviews, channel chief Julie Parrish said that the company is systematically fixing technical and channel support problems.

Brian Foster, a Symantec senior product manager, says the next version of Antivirus Corporate Edition—expected for release this summer—will decrease the amount of memory required and increase scanning times. It will also feature a scanning throttle, allowing users to control the resources consumed to scan a client.

"The quality of our detection has been the best in the business," Foster told VARBusiness. "Now, we need to make the performance better."

Promises of coming improvements haven't been enough to stem defections from Symantec. Trend Micro and McAfee report taking business way from Symantec at an increasing pace.

Sophos is being spurred on by this same dissatisfaction trend in the solution provider ranks of Symantec and McAfee, and hopes to capitalize with a revamped channel program that features 24/7 technical support, new tiers for greater partner profitability, and shared leads.

Hatton admits that Sophos has a steep hill to climb in its lofty ambitions. In North America, Sophos is a $51 million company; globally, Sophos revenues approach $200 million. By comparison, Symantec recorded $4.1 billion and McAfee $1.14 billion in fiscal year 2006. And Hatton concedes that Sophos doesn't have the breath of products of Symantec and McAfee, but counters that the products they do have work better.

"It will take us a while to catch up, but I'm not looking to have their size with the problems they're having," Hatton says.

Добавлено спустя 3 минуты 43 секунды:

http://www.crn.com/security/197800616?quer...oblem+corporate

Frustrated Symantec Partners Seek Antivirus Alternatives

Symantec's enterprise antivirus software has performance issues that are causing some frustrated channel partners to consider other vendors' offerings.

Symantec Antivirus Corporate Edition -- also a component of the vendor's Antivirus Enterprise Suite -- has been breaking applications, bogging down PC performance and slowing systems to a crawl, some solution providers told CRN.

"Our customers have been seeing a lot of Symantec antivirus-related problems, such as delaying applications unnecessarily, and it's reached the point where we're disabling it on many clients," said a Symantec partner who asked not to be named.

Another solution provider who has been selling Symantec Antivirus Corporate Edition since 2000 said the software used to be "the best in the industry," and Symantec made it easy for channel partners to offer licensing and rollouts to small-business clients.

But starting with version 9.0, when Symantec expanded the feature set to combat spyware and malware, Antivirus Corporate Edition became bloated and memory-intensive, and it broke many line-of-business applications, said another Symantec channel partner.

"When a computer or server running Symantec gets hacked, we're running a full system scan with Symantec and not picking up the bug," said the partner, who requested anonymity.

"The frustrating part is that as their software becomes more intrusive and basically locks down the whole system, the hackers end up being able to get through your system faster than you can," the partner added.

Brian Foster, senior director of product management with Symantec's endpoint security group, said that from the perspective of protecting the desktop and the server, Symantec has added several features in the last couple of years, including antispyware, that increases the size of definitions.

"If the default configuration of the software is to include catching spyware, it's going to scan more because it's looking for more things," Foster said.

The real estate on that endpoint for providing protection is something customers and partners must measure, and there's a performance-security trade-off, Foster noted.

"We continually tweak and manage our software to use as few system resources as possible while also adding features to offer better protection," he said.

Version 11 of Antivirus Corporate Edition, scheduled for release in about six months, adds more protection, cuts the amount of disk space required and improves performance, Foster added.

Although some channel partners may not have the patience to wait six months for Symantec to improve its antivirus software, at least one VAR is willing to wait for the new release before switching to another vendor.

"I like Symantec, and they've been a good vendor partner in the past. I'm hoping it's simply a matter of [them] taking their eyes off what made them great, and the growing pains of trying to digest all of the new acquisitions," said the VAR, who asked not to be identified.

[alexgr 556]

все же лучше по-русски. Есть мысль, что этот сегиент у них идет в нишу (как у Кальция, мною уважаемого) - вечно подерживаемого, но редко обслуживаемого сервиса

[Олег Рагозин 10]

Ну что, типичная "болезнь" больших софтверных компаний. Чем больше в компании продуктов, тем хуже качество каждого из них.

[Иван 290]

по русски переводить надо. Можно заняться конечно

[broker 30]

вообще в такой ситуации необходимо повторить исследования на тему - какой антивирус лучше и в чём.

Подобные слухи и новости являются предпосылками к развитию мультивендорного подхода, особенно в крупных компаниях, в условиях когда изменить инфраструктуру антивирусной защиты гораздо сложнее, чем организовать новую..

[Oleg070 0]

А не пиар ли ЭТО?

Чем больше о продукте говорят там болше он интересует.....

[DWState 30]

А не пиар ли ЭТО?

Чем больше о продукте говорят там болше он интересует.....

Есть такой вариант, при условии что вскоре после этого появится информация о ближайшем выходе новой версии, которая просто летает по сравнению со старой. Это удержит старых юзеров и заинтерисует новых.