New Symantec Asia Chief: EMC Playing Catch-Up

Bill Robbins, incoming senior vice president of Symantec Asia Pacific and Japan, believes EMC’s proposed US$2 billion takeover of RSA Security validates the company’s recent Veritas merger.

Robbins, who previously worked as vice president of Veritas Software in Northern Europe, has just taken up the regional senior VP position for Symantec.

“Like almost all players in the technology market, the early mover has the competitive advantage; we are doing this by offering both information security and availability,” he said.

“We look at the EMC merger with RSA security as a positive, because it validates what we [Symantec/Veritas] did almost 18 months ago.

“I like the fact that we are seeing our competition feel as though they need to make moves to keep up with us,” Robbins said.

Robbins believes the changing market is proof of a trend toward the true convergence of security and availability around the protection of information.

He said regulatory compliance has brought together security and storage while the Symantec/Veritas merger supports information integrity.

-Michael Crawford, Computerworld Today (Australia)

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