Symantec's Altiris product line was absent from MMS this year. There was no sign of them in the Expo, and quite honestly, there was very little talk about them. It seemed as if the Altiris product line was also absent from people's minds. Maybe, the conference was too busy?
When you did bring up that Altiris was absent from the event, folks would look into the distance, squint, and say, "Huh. Yeah. You're right." Then, folks would go on to laugh at the small Symantec booth at last year's MMS. There were two booth monkeys (nice guys, actually) who had nothing to do but toss SWAG balls back and forth. We didn't even see them the last couple days of the conference. Their booth just sat unattended.
Gone are the days of an Altiris event prior to MMS (remember those? along with the annual golf outing?). I guess Symantec was happy enough with their 1,500 (as a quick disclaimer, I may be wrong about this number, but that's what I was told) attendees at ManageFusion this year without worrying about the 4,000 plus that attended MMS. That's a pretty good number, though, for ManageFusion, considering they had 350 attendees in 2003 and 500 in 2004.
Still...Symantec's primary business is still security, right? Aren't there a lot of potential customers at MMS that need to hear the security message?
Still, if Altiris had played the Brian Regan card, even I might have attended ManageFusion. Brian is our family's favorite comedian.
Some good news, though, that all may not be lost: Dwain Kinghorn (Altiris/Symantec) was located in the session crowds.
This is the first time in MMS history, I've not had the chance to say "Hi" to him. I was completely too busy when I saw him, looked away for just a second, and then he disappeared into the mass of attendees heading to the next technical session.
So, Dwain, when you read this...sorry about not hunting you down and chatting. Maybe next year.
P.S. I heard someone ask another person at MMS this year... "What's myITforum.com?" The answer was, "It's like Altiris' Juice community."
Uhh...no it's not.