Symantec President Jumps To Business Objects

As Symantec works to absorb its acquisition of Veritas Software, company president John Schwarz is leaving the security giant to take the helm at Business Objects, a business-intelligence software vendor.

Business Objects, with headquarters in Paris and San Jose, Calif., said Sunday that it had named Schwarz as its new CEO. Company founder Bernard Liautaud continues as chairman and takes on the new role of chief strategy officer.

At Symantec, Schwarz shared the president's role with vice chairman and president Gary Bloom and was in charge of the company’s lines of business, such as product management, development, managed services, technology alliances and the security response team.

Bloom, who came to Symantec with the recent Veritas acquisition, will now run the Cupertino, Calif., company’s lines of business and corporate development. Previously, Bloom was charged with running Symantec’s sales, services and support operations, as well as corporate development.

In addition, Tom Kendra, senior vice president at Symantec, has been promoted to executive vice president and will take over the sales, services and support operations, reporting to Symantec CEO John Thompson.