Veritas Jumps Up, Down & Sideways

Veritas Software Corp. (Nasdaq: VRTS) customers dont seem fazed by the storage software vendor’s pending acquisition by Symantec Corp. (Nasdaq: SYMC).

Although competitors stepped up efforts to pilfer customers during the transition, Veritas actually increased its storage market share last quarter, according to IDC figures (see IDC Says Storage Software Up).

Veritas’s overall storage software market share ticked up to 21.4 percent from 20.5 percent in the fourth quarter last year, and its bread-and-butter backup share increased to 41.6 percent from 39.8 percent, according to IDC (see Veritas Tops in Backup, File System SW).

EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC) remains first in overall storage software, but still trails Veritas by a wide margin in backup despite making up ground since acquiring backup companies Legato and Dantz over the past 20 months (see Veritas Tops in Backup, File System SW, EMC Swings Into Software Big Leagues, and EMC Dances With Dantz).

EMC and others speculated that Veritas would be vulnerable in the months after Symantec disclosed it was willing to plunk down $13.5 billion on it last December (see Vulnerable Veritas and Symantec & Veritas: It's a Deal). So EMC launched a migration program earlier this year to get customers to switch from Veritas NetBackup to EMC Legato NetWorker and from Veritas Backup Exec to EMC Dantz Retrospect (see EMC Pulls Switch on Veritas).