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Legato Revamps Integration Strategy

Responding to customer demands to better integrate its storage management software, Legato Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: LGTO) painted a picture Monday of a new, integrated version of its product suite that it hopes will help rejuvenate its dwindling fortunes.

However, the integration work will not be complete until the end of the year, which leaves Legato chasing Veritas Software Corp. (Nasdaq: VRTS), the market leader for platform-independent management software by a considerable margin. Veritas stock is worth in the region of $60 a share, or roughly four times the price of a Legato share.

Kelly Polenski, director of product marketing at Legato, told Byte and Switch she blames the old management team for not being customer focused enough. Since the new executive team took over in October 2000, the company has had a much clearer vision of what its customers want."

David Wright took over as CEO and chairman of the board, while Andy Brown stepped in as the new CFO. “They revamped the entire team and very few of the old guard are left now,” Polenski says.

Legato's product integration and re-branding effort is centered around a couple of issues that are preoccupying most of the market. First, that volumes of data are expanding exponentially and must be stored online; and second, that service levels to access this data have to be offered around the clock. This requires an infrastructure robust enough to backup these large volumes of data while simultaneously providing access to it.

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