At the Symantec Partner Engage event in Orlando, Fla., Symantec CEO Enrique Salem reinforced the company’s continued commitment to Software as a Service (SaaS) . Still, Salem said SaaS will only represent 15 percent of company revenues (or $1 billion in annual sales) within five years. Here’s more on Symantec’s SaaS strategy.

During a keynote speech this morning, Salem evangelized the consumerization of IT — a word where consumer technology trends (from instant messaging to MacBooks to mobile devices) continue to influence and shape corporate IT trends. Salem drove home familiar messages about Symantec’s need to help partners safeguard and manage information. He also emphasized”

But ultimately, Salem caught The VAR Guy’s ear with his mention of SaaS. Instead of hyping the SaaS opportunity, Salem downplayed it. He isn’t negative on SaaS, but he isn’t ready to pitch partners on a world where businesses shift the majority of their applications to cloud solutions.

Over the next few years, Symantec’s SaaS revenue will rise to about 15 percent of the company’s annual sales. Much of the SaaS effort involves the Symantec Hosted Services brand. Notice it’s not hosted security or hosted security. By embracing the Hosted Services brand, Symantec keeps its SaaS brand generic enough to push deeper into both the storage as a service and security as a service markets.

The VAR Guy shot some video capturing Salem’s SaaS thoughts. It will be added to this blog entry later today.

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