Veritas and Network Appliance strengthen ties

By Stuart Finlayson

Storage software provider Veritas and enterprise network storage solution provider Network Appliance have signed an agreement to expand their existing strategic partnership.

After a number of years of integrating their joint solutions for advanced data protection, high availability, and storage resource management, the pair have now moved closer to cooperatively develop and deliver integrated solutions to customers through joint sales and marketing, product integration and qualification, and cooperative technical support.

Michael Burnie, managing director, South Asia, Network Appliance, said the agreement will see a greater focus being placed by both companies on each others products.

"The relationship between NetApp and Veritas has been there for a long time – we have worked together to make sure our products support each other. This (new agreement) is more of an opportunity to work together at an engineering level on new solutions moving forward.

"In the past, we both released products that were interoperable with each other's and with other vendors. Now we will focus a bit more to make sure that the functionality is not duplicated and that we take a best of breed approach."

Burnie added that the move toward virtualisation in the storage industry means that it is more important than ever that vendors work more closely.

"It's very important to show customers that are buying from multiple vendors that we can show them that we are working with other partners and other technologies."

Peter Murray, managing director, Australia and New Zealand, Veritas, commented: "One thing that we have always tried to do is be proactive in terms of making our products interoperable and this agreement will certainly help that along. NetApp is a company that is making a major impact in the storage arena and we recognise that and are very happy to be working more closely with them."

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