* Symantec CEO John Thompson’s remarks at Storage Networking World
While Symantec CEO John Thompson’s keynote at the recent Storage Networking World in Phoenix focused on the intersection of security and storage, it is particularly applicable to servers and data center operations.
“No longer [can] security be divorced from storage and systems management,” Thompson said.
“To get the most out of our information, it has to be secure and available,” he said. “After all, information that is secure but unavailable is useless. It’s like putting all of your valuables in a safe… and forgetting the combination. And information that is widely available, but not secure, is worthless. It’s like putting all your trade secrets up on a billboard.”
Thompson said customers need to create foundations that ensure their information is trustworthy and secure. He likened it to a hurricane warning system that could trigger the activation of hurricane shutters and basement sump pumps – systems that trigger internal alerts and identify the systems that are most vulnerable to attack. Software needs to assess patch levels on servers, prompt more frequent backups, automatically fail over servers to a more secure network and restore harmed servers to a clean state once a threat has passed. Thompson calls all this the resilient enterprise.
Naturally, he claimed the merger of Veritas and Symantec gives users the capabilities to build a resilient enterprise.
Symantec’s LiveState Recovery and Veritas’ Bare Metal Restore automate the server recovery process. Veritas Cluster Server reduces planned and unplanned downtime. Veritas’ Opforce is a server automation tool that allows IT to deploy software, applications and operating systems across servers.
In combination with Symantec’s security management, anti-virus and intrusion detection tools, Thompson said IT should be able to create an enterprise network that responds to threats and other disruptions.
Thompson said that being able to measure performance, secure the network and predict downtime is only part of the resilient infrastructure.
He also wants to be able to restore, manage, protect and recover e-mail, an increasingly important resource in the network. Veritas’ acquisition of KVS does that.
