Symantec today said its revenues increased 2 percent to $1.73 billion in its first quarter of fiscal year 2015, while net income rose 1 percent to $313 million.
Symantec said its earlier decision on separation of the sales force into new business and renewals teams has led to improved performance, especially in North America. Its backup appliances, Trust Services and data loss prevention businesses also generated robust revenue growth.
The company could not increase revenue substantially despite making strategy changes.
Symantec, which said India has showed significant growth in revenue during the quarter, introduced nearly two dozen new or improved products in the last two quarters. The security vendor is set to release almost two dozen more by fiscal year end to improve revenue and profit.
Symantec strategies
Symantec formed a new consumer group for Norton branded products to focus on higher margin in this business.
“We’re simplifying offerings with the beta release of Norton Security and Norton Security with Backup, and we’re streamlining our channel strategy by exiting certain high-cost and unprofitable retail markets and OEM deals,” said Michael A Brown, interim president and chief executive officer of Symantec.
In June, Symantec introduced Norton Small Business, its first Norton offering for small businesses, and it is selectively pairing headcount to match a more simplified business.
Symantec will be divesting a few businesses that don’t fit either its growth or margin objectives. The firm will be updating on new transactions later.
Thomas Seifert, executive vice president and chief financial officer of Symantec, said: “We’ve identified three efficiency initiatives that we believe will ramp during the second half of the fiscal year: optimizing our Norton business, streamlining product support, and reducing our global footprint.”
Top focus areas would be Backup Appliances and selected Security businesses such as mobile, advance threat protection, Managed Security Services and Data Loss Prevention or DLP.
Backup Appliances grew 35 percent. The company nearly doubled the capacity of its enterprise backup appliance from 76 terabytes to 148 terabytes to target the upper mid-market of the enterprise segment and effectively double its addressable market.
Symantec will launch two Managed Security Services in the fall. First, its managed adversary and threat intelligence service will offer better understanding of specific threat actors and attacks. Second, it will offer a cloud-based hands-on cybersecurity simulation.
In the Advanced Threat Protection business, Symantec will introduce ATP threat defense gateway by the end of this fiscal year.
Symantec will be extending Data Loss Prevention capabilities as well into its Endpoint, email and data center security products.
