Veritas Scores A VictoryVeritas Scores A Victory

When a vendor is gearing up to take on some industry behemoths, it should operate from a position of strength. With its solid second quarter, storage-management software vendor Veritas Software Corp. is entering the fray with both guns blazing.

For the quarter ended June 30, Veritas recorded $413 million in revenue--13% higher than the same quarter last year. Net income of $49 million, or 11 cents per diluted share, was about 47% higher than net income in the year-ago quarter.

Veritas says it will start a stock buyback program to counter stock-price dilution from the acquisitions it has been making. The acquisitions are part of the vendor's plan to take on companies such as Computer Associates, Hewlett-Packard, and IBM in its goal to climb up the IT stack to manage databases and applications, as well as files and storage.

Veritas will also face competition in the storage-management space from EMC Corp., which has unveiled plans to acquire Legato Systems Inc. by year's end to increase its lead in the space.

Jeremy Burton, chief marketing officer at Veritas, says the company has an advantage in that it doesn't have a hardware business to maintain. "In life you have competition," he says. "Regarding the disk vendors, I think we can be faster to react, execute, and deliver business solutions to users."