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.

Very strange

[Anonymous Coward]

A successful utility vendor buying a sucessful utility vendor. What were they thinking?

Re:Huh?

[stupidfoo]

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.

Re:How is it strange?

[gclef]

Because everything *except* the data backup are traditional "security" roles. Backup is needed, and recognized by security folks as good, but backup isn't traditionally considered a "security" product. So, to the market (and to many outsiders), this looks like Symantec trying to buy their way into a market they have no expertise in.

Given my experience with Symantec's other areas that they bought their way into (firewalls, for example), I think this means it's time to stop considering Veritas...if it's any good now, it'll completely suck in 2 years.

Re:Forward Thinking

[dbfruth]

The new company slogan will be - "Now you can back it up before we fuck it up"

Re:Huh?

[sbowles]

Symantec now sees itself as a Security company offering:

• AntiVirus
• Personal Firewalls
• AntiSpam
• SystemWorks
• LiveState Recovery, etc.

Buying Veritas gives them an improved Backup and Recovery offering than what they currently have.

Maybe Symantec's just diversifying

[gargonia]

I know I would diversify if I were them. With predictions of new vulnerabilities being exploited within hours [zdnet.co.uk] 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.

Re:Huh?

[Telastyn]

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.

Jack of All Trades...

[chill]

...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

Re:I'm Sick of Mergers...

[the_rev_matt]

The "synergies" aren't meant to benefit the consumer. They are to benefit the investors and the corporate executives. Consumers benefit from competition in the marketplace, mergers of this scale are reductive of competition.

The point is to reduce costs, increase profits, and give all that extra money to the hard working execs and the hard working wall street types who make the deal happen, and let enough dribble down to the investors so that they don't make a stink. Screw everyone else.

Backups are part of security...

[danielrm26]

"Seems like a kind of strange deal to me."

Not to me. If you ever get into the infosec theory stuff, you'll study the CIA acronym; the "A" in it stands for availability, and that's what backups provide.

A backup company is a smart addition to a security company.

TWO WORDS

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

REGULATORY COMPLIANCE

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.

Re:Symantec

[teetam]

Interesting that your diatribe should be about companies, given that your link takes me to a website about atrocities committed by the chinese government (which is true but totally irrelevant).

Why is the percentage of H1Bs a key question? I don't get it. Is this just another xenophobic rant or is there a relevant point to this question?

If a company honestly does its business, thus providing valuable services to willing companies, is that not enough? Why is it important for corporations to support your favorite charity? A corporation is not a person, so why personify it and assign moral points to it?

Sorry, I just don't get your post. Could you kindly expand on it?

Thanks.

Re:Backups are part of security...

[Metzli]

I can see that for Backup Exec and/or Netbackup, but I'm not sure what Symantec knows about volume managment (VxVM), filesystems (VxFS), and cluster (VCS). I'm afraid that they'll end up like a PC company (Compaq) buying an enterprise technology company (Digital). They'll think they know what they're doing, really not, and hose the entire mess.

As an aside, I wonder how HP is feeling now? They dumped the filesystem (AdvFS) and clustering (TruCluster) that they bought by acquiring Compaq (who bought it by acquiring Digital) and decided to go with Veritas. Would you like your entire server roadmap to depend on Symantec? I know I wouldn't have the warm-and-fuzzies right now....

Re:Just fabulous

[Bill_Royle]

If you had any sort of knowledge of Symantec operations, you'd be aware that Symantec outsourced 270 (38%) of their perms in Oregon in 2002. Then in June it cut 206 (30%) of them. [registerguard.com] That's based off a total of about 700 workers. You're telling me that 30-40 percent suddenly weren't productive?

Stop being a pedantic shithead for a minute, and consider the statistical probability of 38% of a permanent workforce suddenly becoming unproductive.

Simply, you don't know what the hell you're talking about. You're neither familiar with their operations, nor are you versed in their history.

I do. I've worked for them when their products were decent. I moved on to a better company, and have watched as they've utterly destroyed what used to be a great product line and employee environment. Of course, losing Dana Seibert didn't help things either.

I don't dislike the employees and contractors of Symantec - if anything I feel sorry for them, as they're receiving the short end of the stick on a regular basis.

CEO John Thompson though? He's utterly destroyed the cohesiveness and quality focus that existed before, and now he's about to destroy Veritas. And that - that is sad.