Paris – July 20th 2009: A decade ago the acronym ‘SaaS’ had yet to be coined. However one company would make history by being the first to fight malware in this way - MessageLabs. Now part of Symantec's Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) Group, MessageLabs pioneering SaaS service celebrates its 10th anniversary in successfully protecting businesses in the cloud from the ever-evolving world of online threats and other content management challenges.
Symantec is now building on this 10-year heritage in security SaaS leadership to innovate further and introduce the next generation of SaaS and hybrid solutions to benefit customers large and small around the world. Of the more than 21,000 current SaaS customers based in 99 countries, 42% now employ four or more SaaS solutions from our broad portfolio - a number that continues to increase as customers realize the benefits of integrated cloud services.
Symantec’s leadership in SaaS continues to be recognised by industry analysts, both through its market share and the performance of its services. One of the keys to this success continues to be outstanding customer service and performance backed by industry leading Service Level Agreements (SLAs) across the services. In fact, the MessageLabs Anti-Virus service is the only threat protection that has confidently provided its clients with a SLA guarantee of 100 percent protection from both known and unknown viruses for many years now, despite the escalation of highly targeted attacks and large volumes of new viruses.
In line with analyst forecasts and what we hear from our own clients we expect the adoption of SaaS to grow significantly over the coming years, which is why it is a key priority for the company, and an area where we already have significant leadership to build on. The MessageLabs Anti-virus service was the first to offer anti-virus protection in the cloud and now has a ten year track record of SaaS success. Combining this with the depth and breadth of Symantec’s security and information management leadership provides an industry beating proposition. Symantec is now in a unique position to offer clients highly innovative and truly integrated solutions that use the best of on premise, hybrid and SaaS to meet every client’s needs.
Background on the SaaS group:
· MessageLabs was the first anti-virus service in the cloud and now has a ten year track record of success
* MessageLabs services have always worked in the cloud rather than adapting its technology at a later date, this means it is proven and reliable. This combined with Symantec’s security heritage provides an industry beating proposition
* We are driving towards SaaS becoming 15% of the Symantec’s revenue over the next five years.
* Industry’s strongest Service Level Agreements (SLAs) that include an unrivalled 100% guarantee against infection from both known and unknown email viruses.
· Symantec has a strong heritage in the software-as-a-service market and now has a ten year track record of success
* Ten years of successful SaaS security validates that businesses of any size and can benefit from security as a service for the most mission-critical applications
* Both Symantec and MessageLabs were positioned in the Leaders Quadrant in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for E-Mail Security Boundary, 2008 report and MessageLabs as the global SaaS market share leader in IDC’s Messaging Security August 2008 report.
Key SaaS group facts:
- More than 9 million users at over 21,000 businesses use MessageLabs services
- Clients in 99 countries
- 14 SaaS datacenters on four continents
- The SaaS infrastructure processes over 3 billion emails and 1 billion web requests a day
- Industry leading Service Level Agreements (SLAs) including 100% protection against both known and unknown email viruses and 99% spam capture rate.
SaaS Q&A
How big is Symantec’s SaaS business?
Currently we have over 21,000 business clients in over 99 countries using our hosted services and we expect this business to experience significant growth over the coming years both through existing clients taking on additional services and through the addition of new clients.
How does Symantec anticipate SaaS will grow over the coming years?
In line with leading analyst forecasts we believe SaaS has significant growth potential over the next five years.
We are driving towards SaaS becoming 15% of the company’s revenue over the next five years.
We expect our SaaS business to grow in several ways. Firstly, through leveraging Symantec’s global presence, extensive channel and strong enterprise sales force we are now able to accelerate the growth around our existing portfolio of SaaS solutions and accelerate the adoption of SaaS in many countries.
Secondly, existing clients that have already adopted SaaS for email security are now looking to us to offer them more in the cloud solutions. For example we are seeing significant momentum around archiving and web security SaaS solutions. 42% of our existing SaaS clients now have four or more services with us and we expect this number to grow over the coming years.
Lastly, we will look to use the SaaS expertise and platform we acquired through MessageLabs and the technologies across Symantec to identify areas for new SaaS innovation where we can introduce new SaaS solutions and hybrid solutions to meet client needs. For example, we are actively working on taking some of Symantec’s leading Data Loss Prevention technology to the cloud. We are also looking to leverage Symantec’s leadership in Endpoint Protection to create a Hosted Endpoint service in the near future.
What are the benefits of SaaS for Messaging Security?
· Businesses have rapidly adopted SaaS for messaging security due to a combination of some of the generic advantages of all SaaS offerings and some specific benefits relating to handling messaging security in the cloud
· In common with most SaaS offerings, messaging security SaaS has the advantage of:
- being quick and easy to set up
- Easy to operate without specialist IT staff
- providing a predictable cost base
- offering redundancy
- Being platform independent – can change underlying systems
- requiring no maintenance
· Overall this gives provides the customer with an easy to use service with a low total cost of ownership
What are the unique benefits of the MessageLabs services?
· Outstanding customer support (available 24/7 to all clients, included as standard)
· Unrivalled service performance/accuracy against industry leading SLAs
· In messaging security, SaaS has additional performance benefits as there is a fundamental advantage to dealing with the threats as close to the source as possible
a) Reducing the load (anti-spam)
- removing up to 90% of email volume before it ever reaches the corporate infrastructure thus reducing the infrastructure needed by the customer to handle and archive the emails
b) Continuity – the service acts as a buffer if your email servers go down
c) Effectiveness (anti-virus)
- being able to update itself instantly and globally rather than having to wait to test the solutions/signatures on multiple operating systems and then deliver them individually to each customer site
- offers greater protection by being able to apply dynamic rules and run heuristics on a scale that could not be done on premise
- being able to draw from the intelligence of screening billions of messages and web pages from all over the globe each day
What is hosted or SaaS web and messaging security?
Hosted or on-demand email and messaging security services provide instant and continuous protection of digital data transmitted through communication channels such as email, web, and IM. Without the need for on premise hardware or software, SaaS security services can be deployed anywhere in the world in a matter of minutes.
Web Security Services for anti-spyware, web viruses and URL filtering operate in the cloud, intercepting viruses, spyware and other Internet-borne threats before they get anywhere near a business network. URL Filtering enables a customer to block URLs, monitor and control internet use, and enforce acceptable usage policies, keeping their business productive and compliant.
How are the SaaS products generally priced and sold?
The Software as Service solutions are generally sold on a per user per month basis, with discounts available based on the numbers of services taken, number of users and length of the contract. The average contract length is three years.
This provides clients with flexibility, scalability and predictable costs.
Has the MessageLabs business now been integrated into Symantec?
MessageLabs has merged with Symantec’s existing Symantec Protection Network group to create a new Software-as-a-Service product group. This group is being led by MessageLabs former CEO Adrian Chamberlain, reporting directly to Enrique Salem, Symantec Chief Executive Officer. Some back office functions such as HR and Finance have been integrated with the wider Symantec organization but SaaS client support, research and development, operations, sales and marketing have been maintained separately as part of the standalone product group.
Is the Symantec SaaS business global?
Yes. MessageLabs was already a leading provider of integrated messaging and web security services, with more than nine million users and 21,000 clients ranging from small business to the Fortune 500 located in more than 99 countries. Leveraging Symantec’s global sales force and channel partnerships, we expect this global expansion to continue.
To support the MessageLabs services we have a robust global infrastructure with 14 data centers across four continents.
The services are supported by client support centers located in Toronto, Gloucester (UK) and
Sydney offering 24/7 telephone and email support available in 12 languages which is included as standard to all clients both large and small.
The SaaS group has 700 employees across 10 countries including; the United Kingdom, the
United States, Canada, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore and Japan.
Symantec - "un SaaS" de 10 ans d'expérience avec MessageLabs et de nouvelles opportunités
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