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Not everyone gets to give a keynote presentation at Comdex, consistently one of the world's largest IT trade shows. Last month - joining such luminaries on stage as Bill Gates, Scott McNealy and Tom Siebel - that honour was afforded to John Thompson, CEO of Symantec, the anti-virus software company.

His billing underlined Symantec's promotion to the IT industry's premier league. In 2002, sales broke through the $1 billion barrier, making it one of the world's 20 biggest software companies. This year, its sales rose by almost a quarter, to $1.4 billion. Company forecasts for fiscal 2004, which ends in April, point to an equally big jump in sales.

For that to happen, buyers must maintain enthusiasm for the Internet after a series of IT security disasters including the Slammer and Blast worms, which Thompson calls "the dark days of August." Therein lies Thompson's paradox: Such crises drive demand for his company's products, but just as equally they could undermine confidence in the entire sector, thereby hitting sales.

"If we continue along the path today, where individuals and businesses are patching their systems, we'll reach a crossroads," he says. "Users will view technology as more of a liability. Some will scale back their investment in technology dramatically, or use the web only for essential business interaction."

Thompson's speech came in the midst of a particularly busy period for Symantec. The California-based company announced alliances with Ernst &Young and Cisco Systems; it unveiled a deal to supply anti-virus software to the US Department of the Interior; and, most significantly of all, it indicated its desire to buy ON Technology, an enterprise infrastructure management company, for $100 million in cash.

This last move is key. Security software company executives are in almost complete agreement, as are many customers, that long-term winners in their business will supply complete security suites, not just point products.

Acquisitions, as well as virus outbreaks, have fuelled Symantec's growth. In 1998, it bought IBM's anti-virus business. Later, it swept up security developers Central Point and Peter Norton Computing, the company behind the best-selling Norton Utilities. But more important to the business than its anti-virus or firewall products themselves, says Thompson, is the company's services offering - whereby its Live Update technology delivers security updates to users in minutes.

Symantec has also gained from bringing together these disparate software products into bundles and suites. "We all know that no single technology can protect against today's complex, blended threats [such as Slammer]. But an integrated approach can eliminate the challenge of point products," he says. Rivals such as Network Associates have also adopted the suite approach, but with less dramatic success.

The company has also benefited from targeting both the enterprise and the consumer market. When Thompson joined from IBM in 1999, Symantec was primarily a packaged consumer software company. Now, approximately two-thirds of revenue comes from business sales. The consumer business helped hold up Symantec's sales as corporate buyers became cautious.

Now, as enterprises begin investing in IT, they are driving growth. Either way, Symantec is winning. And, Thompson's worries aside, it seems unlikely that the next virus outbreak will significantly damage its business.