Products may keep Veritas name after buyout

"Branding for the company is one thing; branding for products is another," said Robert Maness, vice president for product marketing and management at Veritas.

The company will be known as Symantec once its US$13.5 billion merger with the security software firm is approved.

"Where we see value in the brand name -- from a product standpoint -- we'll keep it," Maness said.

"Look at Symantec. They didn't change or drop the Norton brand of antivirus software even after acquiring it," he told a group of international reporters gathered in New York on the eve of Veritas' Windows data protection suite launch.

For the third quarter of 2004, enterprise storage software maker Veritas was the leading global supplier of backup and archiving software with a 40 percent market share in terms of revenue. This was followed by Computer Associates at 19 percent and EMC a distant 12 percent, according to market research firm IDC.

Veritas employs about 1,500 people in Asia Pacific. Last year, it registered worldwide revenues of US$1.75 billion.

Analysts believe it's all in the name of survival. The Symantec acquisition, Forrester Research said, was about "remaining competitive in a consolidating market filled with giants such as Cisco, Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Sun."

Although both product portfolios have little overlap, Forrester poured cold water on any expectation of "radical, new technology combinations" as a result of the merger.

Maness described Symantec's popularity with home users and small businesses as an advantage as it allows Veritas to tap into those markets more effectively. He also brushed aside comments that Symantec had a poor track record in customer service, especially to consumers.

Unlike the Oracle-Peoplesoft deal -- a bitter battle which lasted for 18 months -- both Symantec and Veritas officials expect the purchase to be finalised in the second quarter of 2005.

Maness said the marriage between Symantec and Veritas was about innovation and not to "stuff up the competition and cut jobs like Oracle and PeopleSoft". Oracle plans to lay off 5,000 workers in a bid to cut costs.