After an acquisition binge that shows no sign of abating, Symantec is experiencing something roughly akin to an identity crisis. And no, this issue has nothing really to do with identity management software per se.

If you trace the history of Symantec, the company has its roots in the security sector. But when Symantec merged with Veritas, the company became a hybrid security/storage vendor that, despite initial aspirations, has operated pretty much as two entities sharing the same name. But as time has passed, Symantec, by dint of acquisitions and additional product development, is moving past being a hybrid vendor of security and storage products as it matures into being a purveyor of IT automation technologies that encompass servers, storage and security management.

Unfortunately, it doesn't feel like Symantec is as yet completely comfortable with that transformation. One of the reasons for that lack on comfort is that, despite its growing product portfolio, most customers on average only have 2.8 Symantec products installed. So despite all the advances that Symantec has made in virtualization and disaster recovery, the company still sees itself in many ways as a provider of point products in the security and storage space.

Alas, conditions in the overall IT market are conspiring to leave Symantec little time to evolve further. IT budgets are under more pressure than ever everywhere. The single biggest expense in that IT is the salaries associated with all the people needed to manage IT. As a result, IT executives are going to try to rely more on increased IT automation tools to try to significantly reduce their IT costs in 2009. Symantec needs to be seen as a major provider of IT automation tools today if it wants to participate in a market where companies such as Hewlett-Packard and IBM are already seen as market leaders.

All of this is the major reason that Symantec is putting a full court press on its partners to sell multiple Symantec products into the existing customer base. Once Symantec has multiple products installed, it can make a forceful case for automating IT tasks using the IT process workflow engine that Symantec has created to serve as the foundation platform for a policy-driven approach to IT automation.

As part of that effort Symantec expects to deliver a common management console for its products in 2009, created and open management interface to link to third-party products, is working to make it possible to send alerts across its products that will trigger an automated response to certain events and will eventually make sure that all its products support the same common agent software on the client.

In addition, Symantec is committed to making almost its entire portfolio of products available as a service, which theoretically reduces the cost of IT by eliminating much of the need to hire people to manage specific products on the customer's premise. Symantec has also committed itself to more acquisitions, with company COO Enrique Salem saying the company plans to put aside about $1 billion a year to buy companies that fit the Symantec portfolio.

The only real question is can Symantec make this transition in time. The company has been heading down this general path now for several years. But now with a massive shift in economic conditions, the question Symantec really has to answer is have they moved far enough down the IT automation path in time to serve the needs for customers for IT automation tools that are increasing being seen as a new critical requirement.