The merged Symantec Corp. and Veritas Software Corp. will become a leader in more than a half-dozen product categories. The post-merger Symantec will be not only a dominant security vendor but also a front-runner in backup, recovery and utility computing.

To capitalize on that opportunity, the merged company must integrate two disparate product portfolios, ease investor worries and convince enterprise customers that bringing security and backup together will help them manage their networks more efficiently.

Senior Editor Dennis Fisher sat down for an exclusive interview with Symantec CEO John Thompson and Veritas CEO Gary Bloom at the RSA Conference in San Francisco last week to talk about the challenges and opportunities ahead.

In terms of product integration, what does your priority list look like?

Thompson: We defined at the outset three areas of opportunity, and one of them I think is relevant to our discussion today, and that's what I call "mail hygiene solutions."

How do I scan it to see what contaminants are in it? Where did it come from? How do I store it, archive and retrieve it relevant to policies that I have in my organization?

Those are technologies that come from both companies, not just one of the companies.

Our capability is around shaping of the mail traffic, where you can literally eliminate 60 to 70 percent of the traffic that's considered bad traffic before it even hits the gateway, and then clean it up.

Storing it and backing it up and having an archival policy are things that come from Veritas.

Another one is around what we call the resilient enterprise. When you see a new threat emerging, you can alert the operational tools that manage the infrastructure to do a better job of managing that risk or mitigating the attack consequences.

Being able to take our DeepSight early-warning system and link it to some of the tools like the Command Central capabilities that Veritas has or the backup capabilities that Veritas has is a wonderful opportunity to demonstrate the true value of this merger.