The company has not been able to integrate vulnerability research into its network IPS products, nor had it broken out of the small business market with its VPN product to compete against companies such as Cisco, CheckPoint, and Juniper. Those issues became a thorn in Symantec's side as it increased its focus on lucrative security management and services business, Pescatore said.

"To do security management, you have to be good at multiple vendor management and you have to manage the market leaders," he said.

Symantec has purchased a number of services-oriented companies in recent years, including Riptech of Alexandria, Virginia in 2003 and consulting firm @stake in 2004. Enterprise security services and management are increasingly important to the company, as operating system giant Microsoft begins to push its consumer security products such as OneCare and Windows Defender to market, Pescatore said.

Faced with the choice of investing further in its small share of the security appliance market, or abandoning it to become a vendor agnostic player in the more lucrative security services market, Symantec chose the latter, Pescatore said.

The decision to close the door on the SGS and SNS products may reflect changes in the upper management at Symantec, as well.