Veritas to partners: we are much more than backup

Vendor says it needs to communicate new focus with partners following Symantec split

Veritas reiterated its new focus on information management as a whole rather than just backup, at its global conference in Las Vegas.

The vendor has renewed its focus after its split from Symantec in February this year. Mark Nutt (pictured), senior vice president of channel at Veritas, said that partners who joined while the company was part of Symantec may only know it as a backup vendor, but it is working to change that perception.

He said: "Backup is a really important part of our business; we are the leading provider in backup and recovery technology in the market. For most of our customers, they perhaps haven't understood fully the capabilities we have in storage management or software-defined storage. That is a huge opportunity for our partners.

"Some of our partners, especially if they joined when we were a part of Symantec, perhaps haven't seen it. We are much more than a backup company. We are a market leader in the software-defined storage space."

Its information management solutions include its Information Map product - which allows the user access to all backup information for the organisation globally - and its Veritas Resilience Platform (VRP), which is designed to provide recovery orchestration.

Nutt said that the key to changing the perception is to "communicate, communicate, communicate" through partners.

"We have to be very clear that we are an information management company," he explained. "We are leading in the area of enterprise data management; we have got to talk about our offerings.

"Part of being a customer-centric organisation is customers' backup is absolutely critical. We are extremely focused on it, but we also recognise that is not just about backing up data, it is about how you are going to manage data."

Nutt said that Veritas has around 20,000 partners globally, mainly managed through distribution. It actively manages 623 partners.

Rachel Yardy, alliance manage at SCC, has worked with Veritas for around six years, and said that the new focus is a "nice change" from the perspective most people have of the vendor.

She said: "They are leading a lot with managing information rather than backing it up. It is all about discovering information now which is quite a nice change. A lot of people just know Veritas for backup, so it is good to see the new focus."