Veritas Banks on Linux

Veritas releases storage management products for Linux, banking that it will become popular in applications beyond traditional open system enterprise environments.

by Michael Chait of internetnews.com [July 30, 2002]

Continuing in its heated battle for the top spot in the storage management software sector, Veritas Software (NASDAQ: VRTS) Monday outlined its expansion strategy for the Linux storage market.

The Mountain View, Calif.-based company, which has pledged to provide Linux versions of the same storage management solutions they provide for UNIX and Windows, released its clustering and network-attached storage (NAS) software for the open source OS.

"We view Linux as a strategic platform with immense growth opportunity," said Gary Bloom, chairman, president and CEO of VERITAS Software.

The company also announced a series of initiatives to bring Linux solutions to market with key companies, including Dell, HP, IBM, Intel, and Red Hat.

For this play, Veritas is banking on the adoption of Linux beyond traditional open system enterprise environments, but analysts note that the company may also be one of the key facilitators of the move.

According to Al Gillen, an analyst for IDC, despite Linux's growth in the enterprise market, the operating system has had trouble moving beyond basic infrastructure largely because of a lack of application software.

The key, he said, will be the involvement of the independent software vendor (ISV) community entering the Linux space.

"Veritas actually happens to be an important part of that puzzle because a good part of the UNIX industry uses Veritas software in some capacity," said Gillen.

"The fact the they are moving their suite over to Linux is pretty important because the UNIX community is the most Linux-friendly part of the market there is and if anybody is going to move to Linux it's going to be the UNIX community. The fact that these virtualization technologies from Veritas are becoming available for Linux makes it all the more possible and practical to move over from Unix, or add a Linux server to the mix."

The company's Linux product strategy outlined today includes the development of products for clustered database environments running on Linux, working to bring storage and clustering management software to Oracle9i Real Application Clusters on Linux in 2003.

The company is currently exploring the offering of its storage software on Linux-based mainframe computers, as well as working to embed Linux-based storage management software in next generation storage networking platforms through the VERITAS-powered program.

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