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Symantec to Buy Veritas
jortega writes "Symantec is looking into buying Veritas for $13bn." The linked article is mostly about biz stuff. Seems like a kind of strange deal to me.
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Is anyone sick of all the buyouts/mergers recently? AT&T/Cingular, Sprint/Verizon?
AT&T/Cingular made sense. Their networks are very similar.
Sprint is merging with Nextel, not Verizon. This makes less sense and they are looking to essentialy keep two seperate networks running.
what's a antivirus company want with a backup company?
What's the first thing you wonder when your network gets infected? When was the last time I backed up my data?
It's a perfect fit.
The new company slogan will be - "Now you can back it up before we fuck it up"
- AntiVirus
- Personal Firewalls
- AntiSpam
- SystemWorks
- LiveState Recovery, etc.
Buying Veritas gives them an improved Backup and Recovery offering than what they currently have.You sly dog: you got me monologuing! - Syndrome
I know I would diversify if I were them. With predictions of new vulnerabilities being exploited within hours it seems like anti-virus software would be a risky business to be in right now. If a major organization got rooted via an exploit that their software didn't protect them from quickly enough they might try to sue Symantec for failing to provide adequate protection. I don't think such a case would be have much merit or be successful, but it would still cost money to defend against it. It might be a very savvy move to have another field to expand into if the market on AV got tight.
-- Gargonia
Never play leapfrog with a unicorn.
Or perhaps more accurately, Symantec is hedging their bets. With Microsoft likely to bundle anti-virus with their OS, it's wise to have something else to lean on should their bread and butter suddenly get a big bite taken out of it.
...Master of None.
Once, long ago, Peter Norton made some damn good tools for DOS. Then came their antivirus product, and it was pretty good, too.
Then came Symantec, and so far I'm not impressed with anything they've done. Have they done anything? Other than buy other companys' products and rebrand them?
All the cool stuff, like Ghost, Tools and AV, came from Norton. The Raptor/Velociraptor firewalls were purchased.
Veritas makes some good stuff. Unfortunately, I believe Symantec will fix that over time.
Mediocre seems to be their watchword.
-Charles
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
The world of Information Security has been turned on its ear in the past two years. Little - if any - corporate security measures are focused on methodology such as Threat Analysis or Risk Assessment. The brave new world is mandated compliance - with Sarbanes-Oxley taking the lead at publicly-traded corporations.
Symantec probably has their eye on the data-retention provisions of SOX and GLBA. This is their sales message - because CEO's get jail-time for SOX violations.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."