Symantec Solves the Whiteboard Dilemma

It wasn’t intended to be the highlight of the Symantec Partner Engage conference, but it is creating a lot of buzz among Big Yellow’s partners: the Symantec Digital Whiteboard. 

Developed exclusively by Symantec, the Digital Whiteboard is a downloadable application with a patent-pending file type designed to give users the means of communicating concepts, ideas and plans just as they would with a physical whiteboard but with the benefit of being able to save, share and iterate.

The Digital Whiteboard – available to everyone free during the beta period – is eloquent and simple. It’s a whiteboard in every sense – a clean slate ready for the user to present ideas. It comes with intuitive tools for quickly and cleanly drawing plans, flow charts and organizational structures. What really makes it great, though, is the library of technology icons and the ability to save.

Say goodbye to those messy clouds, kludgy firewalls and awkward server doodles. The icon library gives users professional looking images to represent everything from hardware to disgruntled users. With a couple of easy clicks, users can add text to the images that leave no room for interpretation for what they represent.

The professional presentation is cool, but the ability to share and iterate is the app’s real super-power. Users can save drawings as either an image – JPG or PNG formats – or as new DWB (digital white board). Files saved as DWB allow users to share ideas with colleagues, collaborators and clients, and give the receiving parties the ability to add their thoughts to the drawings. 

Michael Parker, vice president of interactive marketing, said Symantec developed the application because technology people think by drawing on whiteboards. They plan products, deployments, organizational structures and financial models on those wonderful fixed boards in offices in conference rooms.

Conventional whiteboards have several problems:

1)      No portability. Whiteboards are large, fixed objects. You can’t put a whiteboard in your pocket and taken it with you. You can’t send a whiteboard to a colleague or client either. A whiteboard is only good for those who have access to it in an office setting.

2)      No iteration. Nowadays, when a meeting is over, people will take out their iPhones (yes, it’s mostly iPhones) and take a picture of whiteboard for posterity. Well, the mostly take pictures because they’re notes aren’t as reliable as the whiteboard. Only the whiteboard has the shared vision of the conversation. The problem with photos is you can’t change them for iterating the conversation.

3)      No integrity. How many times have you drawn elaborate plans on a whiteboard only to return to the meeting room to find part or all of the board erased? Despite all the notes saying “DO NOT ERASE,” there is little protection against data compromise on whiteboards other than locking the meeting room door.

4)      We’re not artists. No one will ever accuse Michelangelo, Degas or Monet of gracing a whiteboard. Simply put: Technology people – tech or sales – are terrible artists, and that makes even the best doodles on whiteboards look sophomoric at best.

Symantec has plans for its Digital Whiteboard, but for now it remains a free resource for its partners and any reseller who wants to create better conceptual drawings to illustrate their thoughts. It’s simple, effective and easy – what more could you ask for in a planning and sales tool. The downside for non-Symantec partners looking to use the tool – you’ll have to live with the Symantec branding.