Symantec, Veritas Marriage Gets Mixed Reviews

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While vendors slugged it out over new customers over the last couple of
months, two giants in their respective markets were hatching a plan to
ambush the software market with a blockbuster merger.

Symantec’s bid to acquire
Veritas Software for $13.5 billion Thursday reverberated
through an industry beset by consolidation, as the software market has been
nothing if not an expanding and contracting industry.

The deal dwarfed Oracle’s recent offer
for rival PeopleSoft by more than $3
billion.

More importantly, the Symantec and Veritas merger appears at the outset to be as friendly as
they come. Symantec and Veritas
partner Network Appliance praised the deal, recognizing
it as a win for their own customers.

Both Symantec CEO John Thompson and Veritas CEO Gary Bloom said on a
conference call they believe security and storage are bounding down a path toward
convergence. Both men are intent on accelerating their companies’ trips.

“This is not a defensive move by any stretch of the imagination,” Thompson
said. This is an offensive move focused on leveraging the combined
capabilities of the two companies in a way that addresses the No. 1 issues
for CIOs: How do I ensure the integrity of the information that’s flowing
through my network.”

Bloom said the combined outfit will provide customers infrastructure that
detects threats on the Internet. The software would automatically raise the
service level requirements on applications and provide automatic restore in
the case of a corporate virus outbreak.

Bloom also claimed the deal, slated to close in the second quarter of 2005, would
yield comprehensive e-mail management from the edge of the corporate network
to the central e-mail server. The combined product sets will provide spam
filtering, detect viruses, archive e-mail and protect the system against
planned and unplanned outages.

These are all crucial activities. Enterprises are terrified of losing
crucial data in the face of more stringent compliance regulations, such as
Sarbanes-Oxley and HIPAA, as well as laws, such as the California Database Breach Act.

Analyst Noise

Forrester analyst Steve Hunt said the acquisition was good for both
companies for very different reasons. He said Veritas was clever for
looking to add security to its products, particularly because it didn’t have
a channel for security.

“They were clever in recognizing that the security market had some revenue
available and some need for storage or data management,” Hunt said. “In
fact, in a security architecture, the storage component is also the most
expensive and heinous part because engineers who build security
architectures for companies know everything except storage.”

For Symantec, Hunt said the deal is in step with the outfit’s plan to evolve
from a security vendor that sold to consumers and enterprises, to a provider
of information integrity, something the company couldn’t do without data protection
software from Veritas.

“This maintains or stimulates the enthusiasms that vendors and customers
have about the role of security in the enterprise,” Hunt said. “For Symantec,
this helps them tell their new story. If it is correct and true and
worthwhile, then they’ll make money. If not they were going to fail anyway.”

Veritas rival EMC isn’t quite ready to buy into the whole
storage and security convergence line, according to spokesman Todd Cadley,
who said EMC believes Veritas’ primary motivation for the merger is to stop
losing market share in the storage software space.

“I think that was a very forward looking statement,” said Cadley. “We credit
them for taking a very big jump and risk. It’s one of those ‘their risk
equals our reward’ scenarios, where EMC thinks it can gain traction and take
market share in the short term, whether or not the melding of security and
storage will come together.”

Cadley said Veritas had to try something to staunch the revenue loss in the
storage software arena, where it has steadily lost. According to IDC estimates,
EMC is the No. 1 provider of storage software after overtaking Veritas in
the wake of acquisitions of Documentum and Legato last year.

In comparing EMC’s acquisition success and subsequent integration, Cadley
argued that, regardless of whether or not the deal succeeds, the entity
would still be more than a year and a half behind EMC in terms of diversifying
its portfolio. EMC is intent on providing technology bundles of hardware,
software and services.

“We see this as a tremendous opportunity to take share,” Cadley said.

More Consolidation on the Way

As much as EMC refuses to recognize the dovetailing of storage and security,
Enterprise Strategy Group analysts believe it is a necessary and inevitable
step companies will take to offer customers trustworthy gear.

“It was inevitable that storage and security were going to converge,” ESG
analyst Pete Gerr said. “It’s a natural extension of data protection and
data management, especially when you add in the influence of compliance and
regulatory issues and fear of litigation.”

In an example of one of the specific benefits of the marriage, Gerr said
Symantec’s security software and approach might be applied to leading
Veritas products such as BackupExec and NetBackup.

“[BackupExec and NetBackup] have an inherent security but they’re not built
from a security mindset, they’re built from an integrity mindset, which is:
Let’s make sure the bits don’t get slipped; Symantec can provide encryption
and data security.”

Gerr said he expects the deal will trigger additional acquisitions, ramping
consolidation in an already shrinking market. It may already have prompted
some action.

Microsoft, which has for months vowed to establish itself as a powerful
anti-virus and anti-spam software supplier, acquired
anti-virus software maker Giant Company Software Thursday. On other competitive
fronts, Gerr said it will be interesting to see how systems vendors react.

“I think any hardware-centric vendor may have a challenge [integrating a
security software vendor],” Gerr said. “But rivals may acquire a small
vendor to react from a marketing messaging standpoint until they have a
product solution.”

Acquisition bait could include security software providers and Symantec
rivals such as McAfee , RSA Security
, Trend Micro , or even possibly
Computer Associates , he said.

Clint Boulton
Clint Boulton
Clint Boulton is an Enterprise Storage Forum contributor and a senior writer for CIO.com covering IT leadership, the CIO role, and digital transformation.

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