News Review: Symantec gobbles Veritas
Symantec makes a bid to join the big boys by swallowing Veritas
It's not easy doing News Reviews. It's not the difficulties of actually writing, of the research. It's certainly not the Opinions (you may have noticed that this NewsReview does tend to become a Rant Review at times). Rather, it's the danger of committing your thoughts to paper just a short while before things change again, making you look very stupid
Within less than a month of me penning the comments on the Clustering Crown passing to Veritas as HP bins Compaq technology, Veritas themselves are taken over by the young upstart Symantec - best known for their Anti-Virus software. It's not that I'm complaining, it's just that I had only said a few weeks earlier that I was kicking myself for not having shares in Veritas. I should have followed my own advice.
Why Symantec - Why Veritas ?
Veritas was a company that knew what it was good at, and knew how it wanted to get there. During early 2004, it was a popular darling of the press, and looked set to become a major player in it's own right. WIth a combination of careful acquisitions, and organic growth, it was making a bid for the "top table". The problems were the accounting. Problems with accounting practices drove the shares lower, and made it an attractive proposition.
Symantec, on the other hand, is a company which is trying to re-invent itself. The trouble with Anti-Virus, and Security products is that they may be essential, but they are often not hugely profitable. The fundamental reason is that Security is not a very services-orientated solution. When all said and done, it's a case of implementing software products, and ensuring that they are kept up-to-date. Symantec needed to diversify in order to grow, and I suspect that Veritas was just too tempting.
What of the future?
All the commentators I have looked at are talking about this being the beginning of a raft of acquisitions by Symantec, with the objective of re-defining it as a software house looking after data and information in it's widest sense. They will help you manage it, back it up, ensure that it is secure, and protect it from attack. Sounds like a good message.
Will Symantec go into the Infrastructure Management game - facing off against Unicenter, Tivoli and OpenView ? My guess is no. Firstly, this is no small aquisition. Though the software is complementary, and the combined marketing message looks good, I suspect that there will be cultural issues.
It takes time for one company to absorb another. Symantec could take a few lessons from how HP successfully swallowed up Compaq. On the other hand, the new company has a lot of cash at it's disposal. Aquisitions can become addictive to companies, particularly if they think they can afford them easily.
And I have been known to be wrong before
Reviewed by Dennis Adams in December 2004