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I got the chance to meet with Symantec\u2019s Jose Iglesias yesterday. We had a good chat about his company and its green credentials and strategies. Iglesias is a wonderful advocate for sustainability but Symantec a firm has some way to go in that regard. He therefore sees himself as an internal, as much as an external, evangelist at this point.<\/p>\n
Before I proceed its probably a good idea to point out that Symantec is about far more than antivirus. The firm acquired Veritas back in 2004, which brought it a bunch of enterprise file and storage management capabilities. Subsequent enterprise acquisitions filled out the portfolio. Symantec\u2019s Green IT story is very much an enterprise play and arguably a solid sustainability product strategy could help to increase visibility for some of Symantec\u2019s enterprise tools.<\/p>\n
Thus for example – Symantec NetBackup PureDisk<\/a> for storage deduplication could be used to cut the amount of storage and power.<\/p>\n One challenge for Symantec is identifying and serving the new buyers in energy reduction. Most of the firm\u2019s traditional practitioner purchasers are not tasked with reducing the energy footprint of the products they manage\u2026.<\/p>\n \u201cWe sell to admins, but few get compensated on energy savings\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n To which I would say\u2026 not yet.<\/p>\n Smart Grid as Game Changer <\/strong><\/p>\n One major opportunity for Symantec to change the account management game there is to parlay its IT experience directly into related spaces such as Smart Grid security and asset management. I knew before the briefing that Symantec is having some early success in the Smart Grid market selling, for example, cryptography. Security is a major issue overhanging smart grid and remains a key selling point. Iglesias and I discussed Smart Grid Standards in depth – I will write that up in the near future.<\/p>\n I am not a fan of FUD though it certainly works<\/a>. But let\u2019s get real. In Europe for example we\u2019re getting all excited about the need for smart grid standards to prevent tampering with our energy supply. Yet Russia could turn off a gas tap and we\u2019d be screwed within weeks, no smart grid required.<\/p>\n Whichever way you look at it \u2013 energy reduction is going to be very big business indeed. The tail is starting to wag the dog.<\/p>\n Sustainability Reporting<\/strong><\/p>\n GreenMonk has been tracking tech company CSR reporting efforts. Indeed- I am chair of SAP\u2019s external stakeholder panel<\/a> for its 2009 Sustainability Report<\/a>. My colleague Tom Raftery recently noted an interesting split between the efforts of hardware and software firms when it comes to sustainability reporting \u2013hardware companies good, software companies bad<\/a>.<\/p>\n Sadly Symantec isn\u2019t the exception that proves the rule (we leave that accolade to SAP). For one thing it only reports on Sustainability once every two years \u2013 pretty much an instant fail according to my Reporting taxonomy \u2013 Six Ways to Make CSR Reporting and Strategy not Suck<\/a>.<\/p>\n