Veritas starts Precise product integration

Veritas Software said Monday it has closed its $609 million acquisition of Precise Software Solutions, whose application performance management software Veritas intends to use to expand its storage-focused software portfolio.

"(The acquisition will) open up additional market opportunities for Veritas and has already helped elevate the discussions we're having with our customers," Veritas Chairman and CEO Gary Bloom said Monday, during a conference call with analysts.

Precise's i3 application performance management product and StorageCentral resource management software have been renamed Veritas i3 and Veritas StorageCentral. Pricing for the software will remain essentially unchanged for now, Veritas executives said. Throughout the next year, Veritas will be working to integrate its products with Precise's; further details about that integration will be available later this year, Bloom said.

Veritas has also recently acquired server provisioning technology developer Jareva Technologies. One integration priority will be automating the connections between software from Precise and Jareva with Veritas' Cluster Server software, Veritas Executive Vice President of Strategic Operations Kris Hagerman said in a later interview.

Veritas is seeing strong interest in Precise's software among its existing customer base, according to Bloom, who said he anticipates that in many sales situations the software will be purchased as part of a broader, customized product bundle, negating the need for individual component pricing.

Precise, headquartered in Westwood, Mass., but with significant operations in Israel, brings to Mountain View, Calif.-based Veritas 460 employees. Veritas will lay off 40 Precise employees, mostly in administrative jobs, during the next three months because their jobs are redundant, but Veritas expects to hire around the same number of new employees to fill sales, development and customer support jobs, said Veritas Chief Financial Officer Ed Gillis.

Initially valued at $537 million when it was announced in December, the value of Veritas' Precise acquisition rose in subsequent months as Veritas' share price climbed. The deal included a $400 million cash payment and 7.4 million shares of Veritas stock.

(Bob McMillan, in San Francisco, contributed to this report.)

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.