Symantec 2011 Annual Report Download - page 79

191 countries through authorized distributors and OEMs who incorporate our technologies into their products,
bundle our products with their offerings, or serve as authorized resellers of our products. Symantec has nearly 300
distribution partners in its partner program worldwide. Our sales efforts are primarily targeted to senior executives
and IT department personnel responsible for managing a company’s IT initiatives.
Marketing and Advertising
Based on the acquired VeriSign check mark, Symantec rebranded its logo, which unified the company brand,
Norton and Symantec.cloud brands. The new logos are designed to identify our company to both consumers and
businesses.
Our marketing expenditures relate primarily to advertising and promotion, which includes demand generation
and product brand recognition. Our advertising and promotion efforts include, among other things, electronic and
print advertising, trade shows, collateral production, and all forms of direct marketing. We also invest in cooperative
marketing campaigns with distributors, resellers, retailers, OEMs, and industry partners.
We invest in various retention marketing and customer loyalty programs to help drive renewals and encourage
customer advocacy and referrals. We also provide focused vertical marketing programs in targeted industries and
countries.
We typically offer two types of rebate programs within most countries: volume incentive rebates to channel
partners and promotional rebates to distributors and end users. Distributors and resellers earn volume incentive
rebates primarily based upon the amount of product sales to end users. We also offer rebates to end users who
purchase products through various resale channels. Both volume incentive rebates and end-user rebates are accrued
as an offset to revenue.
Research and Development
Symantec embraces a global research and development (“R&D”) strategy to drive organic innovation.
Engineers and researchers throughout the company pursue advanced projects to translate R&D into customer
solutions by creating new technologies and integrating our unique set of technology assets. Symantec focuses on
short, medium, and long-term applied research, develops new products in emerging areas, participates in gov-
ernment-funded research projects, drives industry standards and partners with universities to conduct research
supporting Symantec’s strategy.
Symantec’s Security Technology and Response organization is a global team of security engineers, threat
analysts, and researchers that provides the underlying functionality, content, and support for all enterprise, SMB and
consumer security products. Our security experts monitor malicious code reports collected through the Global
Intelligence Network to provide insight into emerging attacks, malicious code activity, phishing, spam, and other
threats. The team uses this vast intelligence to develop new technologies and approaches, such as Symantec’s
reputation-based security technology, to protect customer information.
Research and development expenses, exclusive of in-process research and development associated with
acquisitions, were $862 million, $857 million and $870 million in fiscal 2011, 2010 and 2009, respectively,
representing approximately 14%, 14% and 14% of revenue in the respective periods. We believe that technical
leadership is essential to our success and we expect to continue to commit substantial resources to research and
development.
Support
Symantec has centralized support facilities throughout the world, staffed by technical product experts
knowledgeable in the operating environments in which our products are deployed. Our technical support experts
assist customers with issue resolution and threat detection.
Our consumer product support program provides self-help online services, phone, chat, and email support to
consumers worldwide. Customers that subscribe to LiveUpdate receive automatic downloads of the latest virus
definitions, application bug fixes, and patches for most of our consumer products.
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