In 1979, NSF issued the second SBIR solicitation for Phase I research proposals Out of the received group of submissions, NSF funded one from a small firm then called Machine Intelligence Corporation of Cupertino, CA - a robotics R&D firm - to support a radical idea i.e to develop software that could sort words in alphabetical order. At that time, this had never been done, except on a Cray supercomputer. The proposal was for an IBM 386. If this could be done, which reviewers all doubted, they believed it would have enormous potential and therefore should be funded. Phase I results were promising and Phase II was funded. Machine Intelligence, however, went bankrupt during 1982. Symantec was founded by then 34-year-old Dr. Gary Hendrix, a prominent expert in natural language processing and artificial intelligence who brought together a group of Stanford University researchers in the field of natural language processing with various ideas for innovative software, including a database program. Building out from the promising results of the NSF funded project, Hendrix obtained financing from venture capital firms which, though the firm was still a long way from product condition, were interested in investing in the field of artificial intelligence. In 1984 Symantec was acquired by another, even smaller computer software start-up company, C&E Software headed up by a former nuclear submarine commander who had studied computer engineering at the Naval Post-Graduate School in Monterey, California. For his master's thesis, that person had developed an innovative microcomputer tool for the CPM operating system called EBASIC. The merged company retained the name Symantec, At the time of the merger, C&E Software also was working on a database program, but the different fields of expertise of the two companies complemented each other. Whereas Symantec's founders were strong in high-technology innovation, C&E had more experience writing tight computer code and working out program bugs. The merger received significant support from venture capitalist John Doerr, who went on to become a member of the board of directors. Doerr was the first to see the potential in the merger and helped bring it about through his urging and financial backing. Symantec shipped its first major product, Q&A for the IBM-compatible PC, in 1985. Q&A was a flat-file database program and was one of the few database management software packages for personal computers that used natural language query, based on an internal vocabulary of nearly 600 words. In order to obtain lists or statistics based on a data file, the user types in queries as ordinary English sentences instead of as arcane commands (hence the name Q&A for the process of question and answer). The use of natural language query in this product was a significant step in making computers more user-friendly. Symantec's sales for 1985 totaled $1.4 million. In 1990, the firm merged with Peter Norton Computing, Inc., developer of the well-known Norton Utilities and Norton Desktop programs, and became a specialist in antivirus and consumer security. For several years following, Symantec acquired more than a dozen other software companies, including Central Point Software, maker of PC Tools, and Zortech, developer of C++ compilers. In December 2004, Symantec and software giant VERITAS Software Corporation, Mountain View, CA, announced a merger with the combined company to operate under the Symantec name. Present day Symantec Corporation provides security, storage, and systems management solutions to secure and manage information. It operates in four segments: Consumer, Security and Compliance, Storage and Server Management, and Services. The Consumer segment provides Internet security and protection solutions, suites, and services to individual users and home offices. The Security and Compliance segment provides solutions for enterprise security, system management, and software-as-a-service. The Storage and Server Management segment focuses on providing storage management, high availability, and backup and recovery solutions in heterogeneous storage and server platforms to enterprise customers. The Services segment offers consulting services, which include advisory, product enablement, and residency services to enable customers to assess, design, transform, and operate their infrastructure; education services, including programs on technical training and security awareness training; and business critical services. It also provides managed security services, managed endpoint protection services, and managed backup services. In addition, the company offers maintenance support contracts, including content, upgrades, and technical support to enterprises; and self-help online services, phone, chat, email support, and fee-based premium support and diagnostic services to consumers. Symantec Corporation markets and sells its products through distributors, retailers, direct marketers, Internet-based resellers, original equipment manufacturers, system builders, and Internet service providers; and its e-commerce channels, as well as direct sales force, value-added and large account resellers, and system integrators. Marking perhaps the end of an era, in August 2020 it was announced that SBIR legend Symantec hadbeen acquired by global IT services company HCL Technologies (NSE:HCLTECH) - National Stock Exchange of india
