Veritas-Symantec merger to push utility computing

SAN FRANCISCO, California – Utility computing again took center stage here last week as the heads of Veritas Software and Symantec Corp. explained how the forthcoming merger of their companies would make data available and secure all the time, much like the familiar power or water service.

Veritas, which creates storage software for enterprises, and Symantec, which develops security software more for the consumer market, are still trying to make Wall Street appreciate the stock-swap merger which is expected to be completed next month.

Both companies explained that due to increased threats to information systems worldwide, integrating storage and security functions into their products now makes perfect sense to help companies better balance access and risks to corporate data.

"The best way to look at our software strategy in the next five years is to be the leading provider of software for heterogeneous environments to enable utility computing with security added to it," said Gary Bloom, chairman, CEO and president of Veritas.

Speaking to attendees to this year’s Veritas VISION technology conference, Bloom said information integrity is now considered business currency so companies must have resilient IT infrastructure to manage and protect this asset.

"We have to exorcise the ghosts of slow data (availability), but keep in mind that with access also comes risks, especially now that too many devices are being added to the network," Bloom said.

Symantec Corp. CEO John Thompson said security should not be divorced from the IT infrastructure anymore if the world doesn’t want to be hit again by the likes of the Slammer virus.

"It ‘slammed’ Windows systems and every 8.5 seconds it doubled its damage to the point that it had 90 percent of systems around the world hit in 10 minutes... Slammer opened our eyes to how valuable information truly is. It was a wake-up call for the industry," Thompson said.

New Symantec

Symantec will be the surviving corporate name of the new organization, which targets to derive 75 percent of its revenues from enterprise accounts and the rest from the consumer segment. Thompson will stay on as CEO, while Bloom will be in charge of customer-facing for sales, mergers and acquisitions and education.

The integration map of the two companies promises product bundles in Day 1. Within six months, Thompson said their combined product lines will have a common set of tools and languages based on a single Symantec management interface, backed by common licensing.

"The new company will be uniquely positioned to deliver to all types of markets, all tiers of infrastructure, and we have no hardware agenda. We will beef up our consulting services... Ultimately the merger will allow IT people from chasing system threats to doing more productive things," Thompson added.

Bloom and Thompson also assured their joint customer base of uninterrupted sales and technical support as they will keep the same help numbers.

Some customers take issue on Symantec’s heavy focus on Windows systems, seeing it as a possible deterrent to Veritas’ heterogeneous approach to product development. Thompson explained that although Symantec’s history has been grounded on selling to consumers, half of its revenues come from corporate customers.

"Early adopters are consumers, so many of our products start with them, then we bring those to the enterprise. It will continue to be so, but will become broader. It’s clear we will move security deeper into the enterprise," said Thompson.

Symantec has created an integration management office to make sure the merger goes smoothly. Company executives, however, declined to give specifics on the possible changes in roles and headcount in the new company. But Bloom said the merger will have the names of the leaders of both companies.

Calling it a merger of equally strong companies, Bloom said their stockholders and staff like it. "There are enthused teams on both sides of the house. People who build technology and those who sell it like the merger, too... We’re not chasing an expense model, but looking at ways to lead in infrastructure software management. Wall Street will understand the capability we will deliver because it will be profitable," he said.

Thompson is also confident the new organization will be received well by the industry, adding that "after all security and storage are the fastest growing IT market segments and the highest priorities of CIOs today."

New Products

Veritas announced during the conference the upcoming release of its Enterprise Vault e-mail and content archiving software for Lotus Domino/Notes and Microsoft Exchange. With it organizations can archive and manage e-mail data, instant messages, Microsoft SharePoint documents, and Microsoft Windows and Network Appliance file systems in a secure, tamper-proof central repository.

Regulations such as SEC 17a-4, NASD 3010, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) directly or indirectly require enterprises to retain and supervise all electronic documents, including e-mail which is commonly presented as evidence in court. Enhancements to the Enterprise Vault Compliance and Discovery Accelerators enable organizations to exploit automated archiving of e-mail for compliance and legal protection.

Enterprise Vault 6.0 also features a new PST sniffer that can locate PST files anywhere on a corporate network. PST files are usually created when users exceed their Microsoft Exchange disk space quota. The Exchange administrator can consolidate, compress and manage PSTs centrally so data are not accidentally lost or deleted.

Also launched during the show was NetBackup 6.0 for management and recovery of systems across heterogeneous Unix, Windows and Linux environments.

"The crown jewel of NetBackup 6.0 is its ability to catalog everything. Think of it as the Yellow Pages for all your important corporate data," said Jeremy Burton, Veritas’ executive vice president of the data management group. "NetBackup 6.0 catalogs all information, whether it was copied by Veritas or another vendor’s system, so administrators can rapidly recover it."

NetBackup 6.0 provides backup administrators with a central Web-based management and reporting portal into their IT environments through the NetBackup Operations Manager, an integrated console that centralizes and graphically presents all monitoring, alerting, reporting and trouble-shooting functionalities. Administrators can gather information in real time on the success rate of recoveries, what systems are at risk due to failed backups, trends on storage use, and details of specific alerts and errors.