The company said it will discontinue future investment in the SGS (Symantec Gateway Security), SNS 7100 (Symantec Network Security), and SGS Advanced Manager 3.0 appliances, according to a statement provided to InfoWorld. The announcement is evidence that Symantec is shifting its strategy away from being a "one stop shop" for security wares, and will focus on lucrative security management and services, said John Pescatore, a vice president at Gartner Inc.

Symantec announced the changes internally yesterday, saying it was a "change in its investment strategy in the network and gateway security business." The news was accompanied by lay-offs affecting approximately 80 employees in the company's SGS unit, according to a company spokeswoman.

SGS appliances are rack-mountable security hardware that combine features such as network firewall, intrusion detection and prevention, anti-spam, anti-virus, content filtering, and VPN. The SNS is an IPS appliance, and SGS Advanced Manager is used for policy management and configuration of SGS devices.

Symantec said it will continue to sell and support the discontinued products, but is "reducing its investment" in them. It also promised to continue development of the underlying technologies in the products.The company will not be producing its own security hardware, however. "Instead of designing the hardware ourselves, we'll look to partners to help us do that," a company representative said.

Security appliances have been a weak point in Symantec's product line in recent years, according to Pescatore. A Gartner research note released in November, 2005, urged "caution" in its rating of Symantec's Network Security and VPN appliances.