Should You Consider Leaving Symantec Email Security.Cloud (MessageLabs)?

In August, chipmaker Broadcom announced plans to purchase Symantec’s Enterprise security business for $10.7 billion. News of this acquisition has made some Symantec customers – especially Email Security.Cloud customers – nervous, and many will be considering moving their email security to another provider. Are these concerns justified, and if you are a Symantec Enterprise customer, should you be thinking about moving shop for email security?

What is Symantec Email Security.Cloud?

Symantec entered the email security market with it’s acquisition of MessageLabs back in 2008. Over the last 11 years they have grown the email security product with an increasing focus on enterprise users, though Symantec has continued to have popularity with SMB and MSP customers.

Symantec’s Email Security.Cloud is consistently named by Gartner as being a market leading email security service, ranked as having a high product vision with a strong ability to deliver.

However, many smaller businesses have moved away from Symantec recently, due to fewer new features being added, a higher price tag than some competitors, and reportedly issues with customer support.

There are also issues with Symantec’s threat detection. Proofpoint’s Ryan Kalember writes that ‘Symantec’s email gateways have lagged for years in their effectiveness against phishing, impostor email and malware attacks.’

What does the Broadcom Acquisition mean for Symantec Customers?

The nervousness for Symantec email security customers around this sale largely comes down to the fact that Broadcom have created a reputation for buying tech companies, imposing severe spending cuts, and then selling on the streamlined services.

Many analysts have suggested that a similar fate is in store for Symantec Email Security.Cloud:

Broadcom themselves have announced to investors that their focus is on three key enterprise security products, Endpoint Protection, DLP and Web Filtering.

In their investor presentation, Email Security.Cloud/MessagleLabs is not mentioned once, which you may argue gives a clear indication of their commitment to the product going forward.

Broadcom have also confirmed they will be ‘focussing R&D and support efforts on highest ROI opportunities,’ which, for them, is Endpoint, Web and DLP. What this likely means for email is that costs will be cut around support, new features could be dropped, and overall development will likely wind down.

Another area of concern for many Symantec customers is their focus on large enterprise corporations. Broadcom confirmed to investors they plan to focus on growth in the Global 2000 market, which has concerned many of their smaller customers, who fear that Symantec will put bigger customers first.

Some customers have even been in touch with us to say Symantec themselves have suggested they leave the service, as it’s now recommended for enterprise customers only.

The result of all of this is that Symantec’s customers are starting to consider switching to alternative solutions for their email security.

Should you look for an alternative to Symantec?

Due to the uncertainty around the future of the product, all organizations using Symantec Email Security.Cloud should start to look at the other solutions on the market. Email security remains the number one way for threats to enter the business network, and it’s more important than ever organizations have strong security in place that they can trust.

Even if you do decide to stick with Symantec and trust that the product will continue to be supported, it just makes sense to look at other options, and see what other vendors are offering in the Secure Email Gateway market.