Veritas Software Corp. has announced that it plans to port all of its storage management tools to SUSE Linux AG’s version of the open-source operating system.
Mountain View, Calif.-based Veritas already offers its applications for use on Red Hat Inc.’s Linux distribution as well as for Windows and versions of Unix from Hewlett-Packard Co., IBM and Sun Microsystems Inc. Ranajit Nevatia, director of Linux strategy at Veritas, said support for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 8 is due to be added in January.
Later next year, the Veritas applications will also be readied for an upcoming Enterprise Server 9 upgrade of the operating system, said Uwe Heine, chief alliance officer at SUSE in Nuremberg, Germany. He added that the two companies will work together to provide technical support and services to users.
Veritas said users currently are beta-testing its software on SUSE Linux, but none of the testers was available to comment about the plans.
Several other Veritas users said the addition of support for SUSE’s software won’t affect their systems. For example, Dong Jin Kim, a senior Unix systems administrator at Rochester, N.Y.-based Eastman Kodak Co., said his company runs Veritas’ applications on Sun Solaris systems.
Stanley Aviation Corp., an Aurora, Colo., maker of aerospace couplings and tubing, uses Windows-based Veritas software to back up engineering workstations running IBM’s AIX derivative of Unix. Mike Menard, a systems and data administrator at Stanley, said the company has only a single Linux test machine in its IT department at this point.
Al Gillen, an analyst at IDC, said the deal with Veritas could help SUSE in its battle for Linux market share with Raleigh, N.C.-based Red Hat. “For SUSE to really get in there and compete with Red Hat, they needed this,” Gillen said.
