Earlier this weekend, I tweeted about a report on The Register expecting Symantec to unload Altiris. It is incredible to think that Symantec acquired Altiris 5 years ago.

What has Symantec done with Altiris? When the acquisition occurred the two core Altiris products that I had dealings with were the Altiris Deployment Solutions (mainly the OEM’ed version to HP (HP RDP)) and Altiris Virtualization Solution (AVS).

At that time, the Deployment Solution (and by extension the entire Management Suite) was way ahead of the competition. Microsoft not there, Novell was in a downward spiral, and LANDesk was being sold about every two years. Altiris Management solutions was the way to go. Symantec was in great position but it feels like the innovation died after the acquisition. The competition caught up (mainly Microsoft). Microsoft System Center is being implemented or evaluated by many. And the stagnation has hurt Altiris to defend it’s turf.

As for application virtualization, I used the free version of AVS to hide my personal applications from central IT. I loved it’s open approach instead of the concept that other vendors were implementing. AVS’s default was to allow virtual apps to communicate with each other and if isolation was required then configure the rules to isolate the the layers. Most other vendors were sandboxing be default and then rules needed to be configured to allow the sandboxes to see each other. I have only run across one enterprise that leveraged AVS (now SVS). Most companies are looking at ThinApp and App-V (and to some extent XenApp)

I recall reading various articles on BrianMadden.com touting that Symantec is ready to take off:

• Symantec acquires a desktop broker. Combined with past Altiris and AppStream acquisitions, we now have another major player in the VDI space! – Aug. 2008
• The lowdown on Symantec’s entry into the desktop virtualization space: Symantec Workspace Virtualization 6.1 – Mar. 2009
• Here’s how Symantec can dominate the “new” desktop. (Fingers crossed they don’t screw it up.. again!) – Sept. 2012

I guess we can reason that Symantec is not going to dominate the “new” desktop.

It will be interesting to see what products stay with Symantec and what will be divested. The Management Suite products will definitely be let go but what about the application virtualization products will those be allowed to leave. Or will Symantec divest of all their workstation products (Norton and Altiris).

Tags: Altiris, deployment solution, Symantec