Symantec Asia Pacific Vice President David Sykes has confirmed Symantec will move to offering software on a subscription-based service with new enterprise "buying" plans expected to be ironed out within the next 12 months.

The vendor will use perceived software-as-a-service (SAAS) demand in the consumer space to give the idea a leg up for enterprise firms, as evident with the upcoming release of the Norton 360 package.

Sykes said ultimately storage will be part of the SAAS offering, but the company is concentrating on addressing consumer security before extending the security software as a service model across the full enterprise portfolio.

"Certainly enterprise firms are going to be interested in the model as a way to reduce cost of ownership, but I think we will see consumers lead the charge as broadband adoption increases, so we will take that momentum and expand it for the enterprise," Sykes said.

"Basically, it is a move to a subscription-type model and rather than an up-front licence payment. We will use regular monthly or quarterly payments with the enterprise space taking a different order of magnitude based on usage, maintenance and content, but at the moment we are focused on delivering SAAS for consumers first and gradually roll the service out to enterprise customers.

"We are still working on a lot of the details for the enterprise side. It is going to be late this year [before] we have finalized our new buying programs as well as the licensing models supporting different license agreements for Veritas and the old Symantec as one single set of terms and conditions. These will be worked on gradually from November onwards."

-Michael Crawford, Computerworld Australia

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