Symantec 2015 Annual Report Download - page 82

PART I
Item 1. Business
Overview
Symantec Corporation is a global leader in security, backup and availability solutions. Our market leading
products and services protect people and information in any environment — from the mobile device in your
pocket, to the enterprise data center, to cloud-based systems. Founded in April 1982, Symantec operates one of
the largest global threat-intelligence networks. The company has more than 19,000 employees in more than 50
countries. Our Internet home page is www.symantec.com.
Strategy
In our security business, we operate a global civilian cyber intelligence threat network and track a vast
number of threats across the Internet from hundreds of millions of mobile devices, endpoints, and servers across
the globe. We believe one of our competitive advantages is our database of threat indicators which allows us to
reduce the number of false positives and provide faster and better protection for customers through our products.
We are leveraging our capabilities in threat protection and data loss prevention and extending them into our core
security offerings. We are also pioneering new solutions in growing markets like cloud, advanced threat
protection, information protection and cyber security services.
Our security strategy is to leverage our unique assets to provide best-in-class consumer and enterprise
security products; deliver a unified security analytics platform that provides big data analytics, utilizes our vast
telemetry, provides visibility into real-time global threats, and powers Symantec and third-party security
analytics applications; and offer cyber security services that provide a full-suite of services from monitoring to
incident response to threat intelligence supported by over 500 cyber security experts and nine global threat
centers.
In our information management business, with a global installed customer base, we have a comprehensive
portfolio that spans backup and recovery, storage management and archiving. Our information availability
offerings help customers keep their data and systems available where they need them, when they need them, and
irrespective of their location. Our information insight solutions help customers know what data they have and
leverage that knowledge to help manage such data better and inform strategic decisions.
Our information management product strategy is to expand our best-in-class foundational portfolio across
backup, storage management, business continuity, archiving and eDiscovery through software, integrated
appliances and the cloud; deliver next-generation availability solutions through a coordinated orchestration
architecture focused on managing and moving mission-critical data in a hybrid cloud world; and enable next-
generation insight solutions that provide visibility, action, and automated control across an organization’s
information landscape through an intelligent information fabric that integrates our portfolio and third-party
ecosystems.
In fiscal 2015, we focused on five priorities: running our businesses with a portfolio approach by managing
certain businesses for operating margin; prioritizing investments for growth; further reducing costs and
improving efficiencies; attracting top talent to our executive team; and continuing to return significant cash to
shareholders. We are optimizing some of our businesses by methodically evaluating every product line to balance
our profitability targets against our objectives. In order to prioritize investments for growth, we are realigning our
research and development budgets to apply the best resources to the most promising market opportunities. To
further reduce costs and improve efficiencies, we are consolidating our global footprint, data centers and product
support capabilities as well as streamlining the way we run our businesses with initiatives to increase research
and development efficiencies and sales productivity. We are focused on continuing to attract talented business
and technology leaders to the company. We remain committed to returning significant cash to shareholders in the
form of dividends and share buybacks.
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