Symantec Corporation, the world leader in utility software for business and personal computing and Internet security, has announced the opening of its office in India. A fully operational management team, comprising sales and technical support, will now be based in Mumbai, headed by Joy Ghosh, country manager for India.

Dana Siebert, executive vice-president, worldwide marketing, sales and services, says, "The commencement of Symantec’s operations in India is in line with our plans for the region - increasing our customer focus, extending into new markets and by strengthening and building on our strategic relationships. We have identified India as one of the largest markets in the Asia Pacific region and are committed to investing here."

According to Ms Siebert, "Our business in India over the past year has made rapid progress and we expect the momentum to continue to build under Joy’s leadership. Expansion of our operations in India will help us to be more accessible to our local customers and serve their needs better."

Elaborating on Symantec’s Internet-related strategy, she adds, "The strategy builds on Symantec’s expertise as a leader in anti-virus and remote connectivity. The strategy leverages this core competency and makes the Internet the common thread in everything we do. This will allow us to extend our leadership in the PC computing area to serve a connected world in the future."

Joy Ghosh, country manager, Symantec India, says, "Symantec’s office and a dedicated team in India will provide the necessary thrust towards fulfilling our prime objective of delivering high levels of customer service and addressing the diverse needs of the marketplace."

According to Mr Ghosh, "Over the last year, Symantec products have received a tremendous response in the Indian market and we are on target to achieve a three-fold increase in sales over the next six months. With increased usage of the Internet and the opening up of the Internet service providers sector in India, there is great opportunity for Symantec in the content security area. Our strategy is to actively pursue relationships with ISPs while continuing to service and focus on the enterprise, consumer and OEM segments."

The newly established Symantec India office will manage and co-ordinate all sales and marketing-related activities and work closely with the 25 recently appointed VARs, or value added resellers. In addition to this, by the end of the year, Symantec will also provide its end-users dedicated telephone technical support from Mumbai. This will ensure better service and accessibility for Symantec customers. Further, Symantec will continue to invest in infrastructure and resources over the next year in keeping with its commitment to India.

Symantec plans to develop web-based solutions that are scaleable, manageable and support multiple platforms to ensure enterprise customers’ content security and remote device support needs. Symantec aims to support a broader range of platforms, besides Windows, including the Unix and Linux environments. In the consumer market, Symantec’s strategy is to leverage its enterprise content security solutions to bring industrial strength protection to consumers and small businesses.

Building on its strength as a leading provider of anti-virus technology, Symantec plans to provide solutions that filter Internet content, protect against unknown threats and block unwarranted or unauthorised intrusion to enable companies to extend their business securely without exposing their systems and data to unnecessary risk. According to analyst firm International Data Corporation, the worldwide content security market will be worth $4 billion by the year 2003.

Symantec products are now available through a nationwide network of 25 resellers. These VARs will be authorised technical service support providers to Symantec’s corporate clients under the Symantec Software Alliance arrangement.

In addition to these, Symantec has entered into contracts with two of India’s largest original equipment manufacturers, HCL and Zenith Ltd, to market its Norton Antivirus Gold Edition.