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VERITAS SOFTWARE AND NETWORK APPLIANCE JOIN FORCES

VERITAS Software Corporation, a leading storage software provider, and Network Appliance Inc, a leading provider of enterprise network storage solutions, announced they have signed an agreement to expand their existing strategic partnership. After a number of years of successfully integrating their joint solutions for advanced data protection, high availability and storage resource management, VERITAS Software and Network Appliance have expanded their partnership to cooperatively develop and deliver integrated solutions to customers -- through joint sales and marketing, product integration and qualification, and cooperative technical support.

"IT complexity is a real challenge for users today," said Steve Duplessie, founder and senior analyst of Enterprise Storage Group. "Tighter collaboration among strategic vendors, rather than vertical integration, is really what IT professionals want in order to increase the return on their IT investment. This deal shows how two market leaders can accomplish something that is not only good for each of them, but for their combined customers as well."

"VERITAS and NetApp have worked together for a number of years to integrate our best-in-class product offerings that support all major Windows, UNIX, and Linux platforms," said Gary Bloom, chairman, president and CEO of VERITAS Software. "To ensure that we effectively bring our joint solutions to market, we are expanding our strategic partnership with NetApp to align our sales forces, marketing activities and channel partners."

"We are enthusiastic about our expanded alliance with VERITAS and are confident that NetApp and VERITAS together offer the best data protection, storage management, and support solutions available," said Dan Warmenhoven, chief executive officer of Network Appliance. "By combining our offerings into robust solutions, together we help our customers gain greater performance and value from their storage infrastructures."