Veritas guns for small business

Just ahead of its integration into Symantec, Veritas focuses on the SMB with

its latest Backup Exec suite for Windows at a launch in New York

This is probably Veritas's last public event as a standalone entity. After

a $13.5 billion merger, the software industry's biggest merger ever, last

December, the world's top storage manage-ment software will become a division

of Symantec this year.

At a news conference in New York City, Veritas launched its Backup Exec 10

for Windows, focusing squarely on the small and medium businesses, and their

need to protect desktops and laptops as well as the network and its servers. The

product suite offers simplified and centralized management for Windows backup

servers through a single console. It's also biased more toward disk-based

backup, rather than tape, and aims for 'continuous data protection,' which a

senior Veritas executive descri-bed as the "holy grail of data

protection" as against periodic backup. The company also launched the

Veritas Backup Exec 10 Suite, which integrates its former Storage Replicator and

StorageCentral products.

The SMB/SMB user (defined, roughly, by Veritas as a business with under 1,000

employees) needs backup and recovery as much as the large enterprise does, but

with specific needs, such as lower costs, very simple administration, and an

urgent need to protect data on employee laptops and desk-tops. In this market,

Veritas says the predominant platform is Windows, though there is a lot of

deployment of Linux and other platforms in the large enterprise space: hence the

focus here on a Windows product. And the most critical application that needs

prote-ction: email and messaging.

The company also announ-ced the Veritas Virtual Acade-my, a new online,

on-demand education center for partners and users of its software solutions

worldwide, as well as new course offerings to help partners sell, deliver and

support the new product and suite.

When asked, inevitably, about layoffs due to the acqui-sition by Symantec,

Veritas chairman and CEO Gary Bloom described the merger to journalists from

Asia as one of "revenue synergies rather than cost cutting", because

of very low product overlap between the two companies. This is "not

something that Wall Street easily understands," Bloom added, saying that

customers, partners and all except the financial analysts had wel-comed the

merger. He said there is very little workforce duplication, hence there would be

very few layoffs, in the few hundreds (of a combined workforce of 13,000)-likely

in the "back office functions such as administration".

There is likely to be little effect on the channels, from this merger. The

two compa-nies use distinct channels: Veritas, the solutions provider route to

the enterprise, and Symantec, the software product channels. But Veritas could

gain from Symantec's larger channel reach in the consumer/SMB space.

For SMB and Windows is a market that Symantec is strong in. With the Veritas

acquisition, Symantec expands its product line, betting it will help compa-nies

cut costs by using one supplier by blending security with data management,

according to John Thompson, Chairman and CEO of Syman-tec. The merger also

expand the reach of this largely consu-mer and SMB company into the corporate

software market, giving it sales staff trained to sell to larger companies, and

a services organization that will most likely continue under Veritas' Gerg

Hughes, and will work largely through channel partners. The combined company

will have annual revenue of $5 billion. While the combined entity will be called

Symantec, Gary Bloom said that the Veritas brand will continue for the products,

just has Symantec did with the Norton anti-virus software, after that

acquisition. Bloom will become vice-chairman and president of the merged entity,

while John Thompson conti-nues as Symantec's chairman and CEO.

The writer was hosted by Veritas Corp.

Prasanto K Roy


New York