VERITAS Software Corporation today announced what it calls a strategic initiative to deliver tiered data protection solutions to customers of Microsoft SQL Server(TM).

VERITAS says it will work with Microsoft Corp. to develop cooperative sales opportunities, service efforts and customer support programs intended to further enhance the performance and availability of SQL Server 2000.

"As a leading provider of storage software for Windows, VERITAS understands our operating environment and the needs of our SQL Server customers," said Steve Ballmer, chief executive officer of Microsoft Corp. "Because of our work with VERITAS, customers will experience an improvement in the performance and availability of their strategic business applications."

Both companies say the will work to develop and market a solution for their mutual SQL Server customers that streamlines the process to implement and maintain Microsoft's database solution.

VERITAS Software also announced today that the Microsoft TerraServer is running VERITAS NetBackup. TerraServer is an online atlas of high-resolution satellite imagery and aerial photography. VERITAS NetBackup(TM) DataCenter technology augments the availability, performance and manageability of Microsoft Windows 2000 Datacenter Server and SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Edition.

Microsoft TerraServer is one of the world's largest online databases, providing free* public access to a vast data store of maps and aerial photographs of the United States. TerraServer data is stored in a 3 terabyte (TB) database running Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Edition -- Microsoft's relational database management and analysis system -- and operated by Microsoft as a research project designed to demonstrate the scalability of SQL Server 2000 and Windows 2000 Datacenter Server. VERITAS's high- performance network storage management application replaces software from a competing independent software vendor, which had previously backed up the environment running on Windows NT