Symantec stakes its piece of the cloud

Symantec today announced that it will offer both its endpoint protection security solutions and storage management solutions through Amazon's EC2 platform. Now Big Yellow customers can have a hybrid solution of Symantec endpoint protection both locally on premises and up in the cloud.  I think this type of solution that recognizes that any transition to the cloud will happen gradually over time is much more realistic in terms of "securing the cloud". It will be interesting to see the up take of this. Are people going to be serious about securing these web services or is security going to be "one of our top priorities" but they won't put their money where there mouths are.

Another question unanswered is does this mean Amazon is exclusive with Symantec? Is there no room for a McAfee or other competitor? If not it really is a coup for Symantec. In any event the inevitable march towards securing the cloud and the staking of claims continues.