Storage specialist Veritas expects further growth
BY ELISE ACKERMAN
Mercury News
When executives at Veritas Software were deciding where to build a new headquarters to house their fast-growing company, they deliberately chose a place right out of Silicon Valley's history: the Mountain View plot where Fairchild Semiconductor once stood.
The integrated circuit was co-invented at Fairchild, and many of the valley's early tech leaders worked there. The company symbolizes innovation and creativity, traits that Veritas values.
A leader in storage-management software, Veritas has continued to grow during the technology downturn and is poised to rebound following a drop in sales after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, executives told analysts gathered at the company Thursday.
``We feel pretty good about things,'' said Chief Financial Officer Ken Lonchar. He said he expects sales to increase 25 percent over the next year -- all the more remarkable at a time when many tech companies would be pleased to see any growth at all.
``They are doing better than just about anybody I can think of,'' said Bill North, director of storage-software research at IDC. North said the storage-software market will likely double in size during the next four years, from sales of $5.5 billion in 2001 to $10.7 billion in 2005.
Veritas is the largest single vendor of storage software, with annual revenue of about $1.5 billion. Other large competitors -- EMC, IBM's Tivoli unit and Computer Associates -- sell both software and hardware for storage systems.
Though demand for storage products slowed last year in response to wide cuts in tech spending, a new corporate emphasis on disaster recovery could lead to additional sales for the storage sector.
Veritas Chief Executive Gary Bloom said there has already been increased interest in his company's disaster-recovery products during the past two months.
Indeed, September's tragic events highlighted the importance of the company's products. The company told analysts Thursday that the 112 customers who called Veritas for tech support after the planes hit the Pentagon and the Twin Towers all retrieved 100 percent of their data.
A longtime participant in volunteer search-and-rescue teams, Bloom is not necessarily touting this success.
``All of us know people who were lost,'' he said. At 3 p.m. on the afternoon of Sept. 11, a Veritas sales team had an appointment on the 97th floor of one of the World Trade Center towers, he said.
Though Veritas did not lose any employees, the company suffered financially in the aftermath along with many other businesses. Sales for the third quarter, which closed Sept. 30, were down 13 percent from the previous quarter, though the $340 million in revenue was still higher than the prior year.
Now, Bloom feels like business has largely returned to normal. The company's Mountain View campus, occupied just three months before the attacks, was tranquil in the November sunshine. Employees gathered for lunch on an outdoor patio, and a breeze stirred a stand of redwoods that had been preserved by the builders.
Inside an adjacent conference center, Bloom assured analysts that he was sticking to his goal of increasing sales to $5 billion during the next few years.
``I think it's attainable,'' said David Breiner, an analyst at Bear Stearns. ``The question is in what time frame.''
In the meantime, Bloom is preparing extra office space for his 5,600 employees. In March, the company broke ground on a second Bay Area campus in Milpitas. The buildings, which will total 465,000 square feet, are scheduled to be finished in August.
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