Veritas Software Corp. is expected to announce next week that its suite of storage-management software will run on IBM Corp.’s AIX operating system.
The company would not release many details at this time but sources said that its Volume Manager, File System, Cluster Server and File Replicator products would likely be ready to run on AIX, IBM’s flavor of Unix, this quarter. This collection of software should open up new choices for IBM server customers looking to simplify and automate data-management tasks.
Veritas’ management products are already available for Sun Microsystems Inc.’s Solaris, Hewlett-Packard Co.’s HP-UX and Microsoft Corp.’s Windows operating systems. Sun, in particular, has shared a tight relationship with Veritas and Oracle Corp., making sure their software works well with Solaris and Sun’s servers.
Veritas and IBM formed a joint development program in 2000 to help bring their software platforms closer together. IBM will have Veritas lined up along with Oracle’s 9i database readied for AIX 5L in May. IBM executives have said they expect future releases of Oracle products to ship at the same time for AIX, Solaris and HP-UX.
As IBM and Veritas have drawn closer, Sun claims to have sharpened its own data management software and file system technology, letting the vendor offer what it considers a viable alternative to its partners products, said Andy Ingram, Sun’s vice president of marketing for Solaris.
“Customers can choose freely between Solaris and Veritas,” Ingram said. “The advantage we offer is that (our technology) is built into the OS and has all the stability and integration that any part of the OS brings. Second, it’s free. The list price for Veritas can be as high as US$80,000 and then support costs on top of that.”
With the release of Solaris 9 – due out by mid-year – Sun will take a major step toward its goal of building many “core” management functions into Solaris, bundling some software that competes with Veritas at no cost. Sun is following a similar path with its iPlanet Internet infrastructure products by shipping some software with Solaris that competes against another major partner, BEA Systems Inc.
The announcement from Veritas is expected to take place early next week in Dallas, at the Veritas Vision conference.
