A chunk of Symantecs products includes their Internet Security suite, which is a congolmerate of tools, much like other offerings, that helps protect a Windows machine from the multitude of viruses, spyware, malware and others that seek to plague users lives. Microsoft's up and coming "OneCare" is stepping on the toes of many of those products, seeking to integrate anti-spyware and anti-malware functionality into the OS itself. Symantec's answer? They will combine their software into a single, streamlined application, code named "Genesis", on a subscription basis (much like their current products).
"Genesis is not a suite or a bundle of tools, but a single integrated software application delivered to consumers as a service," Tom Powledge, the director of product management at Symantec, said in an interview Wednesday. The company plans to officially announce Genesis next week, he said.
Despite being a pay product, Symantec has a significant advantage over MS in that many many people already use their products to protect their PC, and Symantec is also able to release their software at any time. As soon as this September, even. OneCare will also not offer anti-virus protection, which this product will, along with e-mail filtering, phishing protection and more. Though this is becoming pretty standard, what will really determine how good any of these products are is how effective they are at identifying new threats and how well they are able to update themselves to reflect those changes. Interesting stuff.