Features - Financial Plays Of The Week:

BMC SOFTWARE, VERITAS SOFTWARE ENHANCE STORAGE PARTNERSHIP

BMC Software Inc, a leading provider of enterprise management, has announced its participation in the VERITAS Enabled Program to provide fully integrated storage solutions to companies worldwide. This program drives collaborative efforts, including product integration, qualification and ongoing technical support. Customers benefit from interoperability of specific BMC Software and VERITAS Software product combinations as products progress through release lifecycles. Additionally, the cooperative customer service and support component of the program allows for faster resolution of customer support issues.

"As a leading provider of data, voice and media transport solutions, WilTel Communications services a growing carrier-class customer base with complex communications needs," said Eddie Morris, supervisor of database services, WilTel Communications. "To further complicate our technology requirements, our advanced network infrastructure reaches border-to-border and coast-to-coast with international connectivity to accommodate global traffic, making it mandatory that our systems remain available at all times. As a current BMC and VERITAS customer, the joint support is a huge benefit as it saves time by allowing us to work with one vendor to quickly get potential problems resolved and our systems up and running."

BMC Software is working with VERITAS Software, a leading storage software provider, via cooperative engineering to maintain interoperability of new product versions such as BMC Software's industry-leading database backup and recovery solution, SQL-BackTrack, and VERITAS' industry-leading data protection solution, VERITAS NetBackup. This integration leads to reduced storage complexity, administrative requirements, and database recovery time.

"This announcement demonstrates VERITAS' commitment to interoperable, cooperatively supported software solutions, especially in database backup and recovery environments," said Brenda Zawatski, vice president of product marketing, VERITAS Software. "We look forward to furthering our work on interoperable software solutions with a variety of VERITAS and BMC products."

"The combination of BMC's leading database backup and recovery solution and VERITAS NetBackup provides customers with the best of both worlds," said William Donahoo, vice president of Business Development, Enterprise Data Management, BMC Software. "By partnering with VERITAS Software, BMC and Veritas are providing customers with the ability to seamlessly integrate database backup achieved through SQL-BackTrack with the broad devices and media support of VERITAS NetBackup, creating the most cost effective and reliable recovery solutions for customers' mission critical data."

For additional information on BMC Software's SmartDBA Family of data management solutions, please visit www.bmc.com/solutions/database/. For further information about the VERITAS Enabled program and VERITAS data protection products, please visit www.veritas.com/partner and www.veritas.com/products/ProductHome.jhtml.

About BMC Software

BMC Software Inc is a leader in enterprise management. The company focuses on Assuring Business Availability for its customers by helping them proactively improve service, reduce costs and increase value to their business. BMC Software solutions span enterprise systems, applications and databases. Founded in 1980, BMC Software has offices worldwide and is a member of the S&P 500, with fiscal year 2002 revenues of approximately $1.3 billion. Visit www.bmc.com to learn more.

Contact: Julie Akstin-Dearing of BMC Software Inc, 713-918-1434, julie--dearing@bmc.com.