back to article Symantec scratches head over balance sheet, calls in JPMorgan

Reports say Symantec, struggling to reverse a revenue slowdown, has called in JPMorgan Chase & Co. to look at its options and help fend off activist shareholders. Symantec is a $6.7bn/year revenue company that is struggling to lift its earnings. The last quarterly report made that abundantly clear. It fired its CEO Steve …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Don't need JPM

    It's quite simple. People have caught on that they make slow, bloated and buggy security software.

    1. James Gosling

      Re: Don't need JPM

      That's right. Isn't it tragic that the people in charge of these companies know so little about their actual technology to know that. As the last commenter said you don't need JP Morgan to tell you that!

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      I hope it hurts...

      Their pain, my pleasure.

  2. The Jase

    Backup Exec

    "[Symantec’s] storage assets – Backup Exec, NetBackup and the Storage Foundation product sets – have been around for a long time, but revenues are down."

    Backup exec 2012 being crap and not factoring in multiple servers to one tape drive doesn't help. People are moving onto other products.

  3. David Austin

    A Working backup exec product would help

    Fun fact: Want a tape drive and a working backup under 2012/2012 R2 server? Go talk to someone else, because backup Exec 2012 does not do that.

    Backup Exec 2014 is currently at beta 1 stage, and won't launch until Jul/Aug this year: That's a lag of 22 months between Microsoft releasing Windows Server, and Symantec releasing a product that supports it.

    That's beside the perennial BE2012 issues of no multiple job types to one tape/job, and no Job view UI issues.

    1. The Jase

      Re: A Working backup exec product would help

      I am nagging my workplace to find another backup solution for our customers when the renewals come around.

  4. i like crisps
    FAIL

    FUCK NORTON!!!!!!!

    Game Over.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Obsolete

    - Storage Foundation is now irrelevant - disk management and expansion is trivial in Windows 2008/2012

    - Endpoint Protection (AV) is bloated and slow - many others to chose from at a fraction of the cost

    - Netbackup - constantly fails to restore, always takes 12-18 months to support a new o/s fully, and a weekly stream of hotfixes are released to flog this dead horse

    $6.7 billion is testament only to the idiots in charge of IT who continually renew their maintenance and buys their crappy products. I'm amazed they are still in business.

  6. DerekCurrie
    Devil

    May I have the honor of the final shove?

    From an Apple Mac user's perspective, Symantec has been a significant bane. It started the anti-Apple security FUD festival in 2005 with its nonsensical hypothesis of 'security through obscurity'. It foisted some of the least usable and most annoying 'anti'-malware software available. It constantly slagged on the Mac platform simply for the sake of hate mongering. It ate alternative and often superior security software and learned nothing from the experience. It offered inspired Java programming tools one day, then EOLed them the next, leaving customers shipwrecked. IMHO, a vile company.

    May I PLEASE give Symantec that last, final push into oblivion?

  7. Alistair
    Coat

    Has anyone seen Carl this week?

    Yo:

    Icahn('t) -> look over there

  8. Brian Souder 1

    Crap Software

    Yeah - I have been saying their stuff is crap for years. Everything from PIA Backup Exec to their AV. I am seeing more and more viruses just blow right past Symantec products like it was not even there. The software does not cleanly uninstall, etc. When you have to make a special tool to uninstall your own crap software, you need to give it up. Consumers are finally waking up too. I guess all those complaints in forums have fallen on deaf ears in management. I would say - thanks for the memories, but it was more like thanks for the headaches.

  9. Down not across

    JPM can't help make irrelevant relevant

    Pretty much everything in their portfolio is irrelevant. The functionality that theire products (claims to..) offer is now done just as well if not better by native support (take for example Veritas filesystem) and where not, other third party products offer much better performance and value for money.

  10. Mitoo Bobsworth
    Happy

    They deserve each other

    Shitty Software corporate, meet shitty Banking corporate.

  11. The Dude

    Symantec sucks....

    No need to hire experts to know why Symantec is failing, and it will only get worse. Like many in the industry, I am moving my clients off Symantec, as fast as I possibly can. Besides all the technical/bloatware/ugly interface problems, SYmanetc - as a company- sucks. It really sucks.

    Symantec are censorious bunch of arrogant buttheads who really should be in some other line of work where their complete lack of tech/customer savvy might work. Like government, for example.

    PS... Symanec, please feel free to send me more email from your corporate lawyers. It will be my pleasure to ignore it the way that you ignore us.

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