Continuing in its heated battle for the top spot in the storage management
software sector, Veritas Software Monday outlined its
expansion strategy for the Linux storage market.
The Mountain View, Calif.-based company, which has pledged to provide Linux
versions of the same storage management solutions they provide for UNIX and
Windows, released its clustering and network-attached storage (NAS) software
for the open source OS.
“We view Linux as a strategic platform with immense growth opportunity,”
said Gary Bloom, chairman, president and CEO, VERITAS Software.
The company also announced a series of initiatives to bring Linux solutions
to market with key companies, including Dell, HP, IBM, Intel, and Red Hat.
For this play, Veritas is banking on the adoption of Linux beyond
traditional open system enterprise environments, but analysts note that the
company may also be one of the key facilitators of the move.
According to Al Gillen, an analyst for IDC, despite Linux’s growth in the
enterprise market, the operating system has had trouble moving beyond basic
infrastructure largely because of a lack of application software.
The key, he told internetnews.com, will be the involvement of the independent software
vendor (ISV) community entering the Linux space.
“Veritas actually happens to be an important part of that puzzle because a
good part of the UNIX industry uses Veritas software in some capacity,” said
Gillen.
“The fact the they are moving their suite over to Linux is pretty
important because the UNIX community is the most Linux-friendly part of the
market there is and if anybody is going to move to Linux it’s going to be
the UNIX community. The fact that these virtualization technologies from
Veritas are becoming available for Linux makes it all the more possible and
practical to move over from Unix, or add a Linux server to the mix.”
The company’s Linux product strategy outlined today includes the development
of products for clustered database environments running on Linux, working to
bring storage and clustering management software to Oracle9i Real
Application Clusters on Linux in 2003.
The company is currently exploring the offering of its storage software on
Linux-based mainframe computers, as well as working to embed Linux-based
storage management software in next generation storage networking platforms
through the VERITAS-powered program.
Veritas Banks on Linux
