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Symantec, Veritas Merger Approved
stuuf writes "Shareholders today voted to approve a merger between Symantec and Veritas. The deal, announced last December, was valued at $13.5 billion. However, some of Symantec's investors have backed off since then, and the merger, expected to close on July 2, is now valued at only $11 billion. Many of Symantec's products have been losing popularity recently; the merger may be good news for Veritas's competitors."
You're a real glass half empty guy aint ya. Maybe the Veritas dudes will take over the development of NAV and the thing will get better :)
How we know is more important than what we know.
The only reason I work with it is that many PHBs seem to have IBM syndrome - "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM".
And now we can look forward to that 'expertise' being brought to a backup solution. WHEE!
lol. You came partway to answering you own question:
"virus protected databases"
Um, as a matter a fact, yes, corporate customer are very concerned about their data, and would like it protected..
Essentially, you need to look at it from the customer's perspective (i.e the business solution they're solving, not from the geek classification of the company). That is, symantec is interested in deploying mid to enterprise level solutions that solve the problem of how to gurantee data and systems integrity. IDS's, antivirus software, firewalls, etc, are all part of symantec's current business. Veritas provides backup solutions. That is one essential part of ensuring data integrity. So the admin can look at their IDS/Antivirus screen, notice that they've been attacked, and hit the "restore" button (this is all hypothetical, but you get the idea..) All one integrated solution... Does it make more sense now?
Veritas is so 90s. Vxvm is extremely overrated with features that cannot possibly be deployed in a mission critical environment. If you stick to your regular mirrors, stripes, raids... you mind as well use the FREE Aix LVM or Solaris VM. Which I swear are simpler and better nowadays.
That's not entirely true. For example, LVM relies on volume definitions in the ODM, which in a clustered environment, can easily get out of sync on one of your servers with the definitions in the VGDA if a logical volume has been modified outside of the HACMP environment. This can cause you some major headaches when you try to fail over to your other node if the VGDA no longer agrees with ODM on your failover node. That's not a problem you have if you're using Veritas instead of LVM.
That isn't to say that LVM sucks, it doesn't, and in most cases you don't need anything else. But there are situations, particularily in clustered environments, where there are definite advantages to using Veritas over LVM.
Symantec is confused. The buying spree for small companies such as Riptech, @stake, and Lyric all seemed to make basic sense for a security-focused company -- however badly it's been integrated -- but the Veritas merger is an odd broadening of coverage. (Disclaimer: my company was acquired by Symantec last year, and I quit recently because I could discern no coherent strategy.)
At first blush, it seemed inspired. Working in security consulting, I spend all day talking to people about security as an integral business requirement for systems and processes, as opposed to applying security as a blanket (extra processes or un-integrated technologies) over unknown or messed-up business processes. So the idea of data management and protection being rolled up together with C-I-A requirements in products and services that average-joe can comprehend seemed all goodness.
But really? Inspiration is a tall order for John Thompson, who can't even maintain an appropriate filter between brain and mouth long enough to avoid pissing off major clients, much less describe what the new company's strategy is. That man's head is solid bone. And the rest of the exec team isn't much better. Charlie (EVP Services) is a spluttering angry midget who can't manage to talk about the new company without devolving into his "sugar-high speech" about how we'll all re-live the glory days and get rich by frightening our clients into buying more product and services. Seriously. He's done that repeatedly. And what the hell does "Security + Availability = Information Integrity" mean? (Does Integrity - Availability = Security?) Utter nonsense; a marketing word-salad. It's embarrassing, really.
Now, if the SymExecs had their collective shit together, they would do a reset and realize that from the current position they could easily become a serious MS-contender by merging with a company that has platform/productivity apps. (Think Novell/Suse or Sun.) That would give them a basic platform or two, data storage, db/management, data protection, application dev platform, secure networking, client services, independent client productivity apps, profesional services at multiple levels, etc etc. But that ain't gonna happen. Maybe that would exceed "bold" and reach "foolish" but without some boldness, Symantec is going to suffocate under its own weight. Quoth Fast Company magazine a few years ago: "Size is not a strategy."
J
I think not...(*poof*)