Veritas guns for small business houses

This is probably Veritas´ last public event as a standalone entity. After the $13.5 billion merger, the software industry´s biggest merger ever, last December, the world´s top storage management software will become a division of Symantec this year.



At a news conference in New York yesterday, Veritas launched its Backup Exec 10 for Windows, focusing squarely on 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 described 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 user­defined, roughly, by Veritas as a business with under 1,000 employees­needs 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 desktops. 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 protection: email and messaging.



The company also announced the Veritas Virtual Academy, 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 acquisition by Symantec, Veritas Chairman and CEO, Gary Bloom described the merger to journalists from Asia as one of the '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," Gary added, saying that customers, partners and all except the financial analysts had welcomed the merger. He said as there was very little workforce duplication, 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'. 



SMB and Windows is also a market that Symantec is strong in. With the Veritas acquisition, Symantec expands its product line, betting it will help companies cut costs by using one supplier by blending security with data management, according to Chairman and CEO of Symantec, John Thompson.



The merger also expands the reach of this largely consumer 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. The combined company will have annual revenue of $5 billion. While the combined entity will be called Symantec, Gary said that the Veritas brand will continue for products, just as Symantec did with the Norton anti-virus software, after that acquisition. Gary will become Vice-chairman and President of the merged entity, while John Thompson continues as Symantec's Chairman and CEO.



PRASANTO K ROY

NEW YORK 

-- (The author was hosted in New York by Veritas Corp)