Veritas CEO justifies acquisition by Symantec

SAN FRANCISCO: Kicking off the annual customer meet Vision 2005, Veritas CEO Gary Bloom, in a large part of keynote address, defended the acquisition by Symantec.

In December last year, security leader Symantec announced plans to acquire Veritas, provider of data protection, storage management and data management solutions. Wall Street and media didn't make much sense of the announcement and Symantec shares went down by nearly 40 per cent after the $13.5 billion acquisition was announced.

Said Bloom, " This is a new trend in acquisitions which is not about the strong company acquiring the weak or one company acquiring the other for cutting costs, or any other such objectives. It is about leaders in two different markets coming together". He likened it to the recent Adobe-Macromedia acquisition. Security and storage management, though important pieces of the overall enterprise infrastructure software, are thought to be diverse. Bloom's theory is that if currency is information, then information too is currency and it needs to stored and secured to preserve its integrity. But the theory about the convergence of the two areas didn't seem to sink in well with the media and Gary was repeatedly asked to explain the synergies between Symantec and Veritas.

Bloom defended by saying that much more important audiences like customers and partners have welcomed the merger and that the financial analyst community 's response would turn around.

Important product and roadmap announcements are expected soon. The acquisition is expected to be complete by June and post that Veritas would cease to be an independent entity. Symantec CEO John Thompson would also be delivering a keynote later at the conference.