Veritas to boost IBM dealings
By Mike Tarsala, CBS.MarketWatch.com
Last Update: 4:45 AM ET Nov. 3, 2001
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (CBS.MW) -- Veritas Software plans to unveil this week an expanded sales and marketing alliance with hardware and services giant IBM that analysts say could increase the customer base for the smaller company's flagship product.
The announcement will be timed to correspond with a meeting on Thursday with financial analysts at Veritas headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., according to sources close to the company.
IBM's global services employees will recommend storage-management software maker Veritas' applications for an increasing number of its technology projects. Veritas' software will be sold to customers with networks mostly running Microsoft or Unix operating software. IBM will sell its Tivoli Storage Manager software for mainframe applications.
Analysts said the relationship will get Veritas' products in the door at large companies that its sales force didn't reach before.
"If you look at a list of the top 5,000 companies worldwide, most of those companies have enterprise storage initiatives that start on the mainframe level," said Bill North, analyst with Framingham, Mass.-based International Data Corp. "They'll talk to IBM before they'll talk to Veritas."
Julia Glenister, spokeswoman for Veritas, said she wouldn't confirm or deny plans for a stepped-up marketing alliance between the two companies.
Sources familiar with the announcement said they're not certain if Veritas (VRTS: news, chart, profile) and IBM (IBM: news, chart, profile) plan to announce they're working to co-develop storage products made especially for Big Blue's DB2 database-management software. In September, Veritas unveiled a version of its software made especially for the Oracle 9i (ORCL: news, chart, profile) database.
Such a product agreement with IBM could benefit Veritas, as Big Blue continues to take market share from Oracle in the database market, and Hewlett-Packard (HWP: news, chart, profile) and Sun Microsystems (SUNW: news, chart, profile) in server computers, says Doug Van Dorsten, analyst with Thomas Weisel Partners in San Francisco.
"The only one that's growing right now is IBM, and Veritas doesn't have a very close relationship with them," Van Dorsten said. |
