IPO still the plan says Veritas CEO

CEO says new vision of an enterprise data management platform will help it float

Veritas still intends to float within 36 months of its acquisition by The Carlyle Group, CEO Bill Coleman told CRN at the vendor's global conference in Las Vegas.

Veritas was bought by the private investment firm in February 2016, following the vendor's split from Symantec last year, before which it was a public company. But Coleman said that Carlyle invests in firms and encourages them to then go public.

He said: "Carlyle is a really great partner but that is the model they invest in. They buy companies that then go public. We will use being private for three to four years to really streamline the company. We want to focus and get built into the next growth phase. These are the kind of things that if you were public they would be asking why you aren't making more profit."

Coleman said that part of the company's motives for going public revolve around the new vision for the company, which is to create an enterprise data management platform. The platform is designed to work with big data, predictive analytics and machine learning, and Coleman said that he hopes it will launch "not too long from now".

"The enterprise data management platform represents the vision," he explained. "The real vision is that the market is going to move. Customers are beginning right now to figure out how to transform their IT environment to better leverage big data, predictive analytics and machine learning. My vision is that we can become the platform to allow our enterprise customers to do that.

"Carlyle needs to make their money back. We get to build this whole platform, which if we are correct will give us high growth rate in four to five years. When you get to the public market, your valuation is based on multiples of your earnings and growth rate. So the higher your growth rate, the more valuation."

Coleman was asked to join the Carlyle Group team that was looking into buying Veritas when Symantec first started looking for bids in February 2015.

He said: "Carlyle came along in 2015 and asked me to join the team. I said yes but that I didn't want to be the CEO. Four months later I was bitten by the vision of what could really happen. I still wasn't thinking about being the CEO, then Carlyle said they would invest but only if I was the CEO. So I'm the CEO.

"This is a transformation. The whole world has to transform themselves if they are going to compete, based on the information economy and big data. We get to do it again. We get to help the customer move up to a new level of platform. It will fundamentally change how business is done. [Veritas] has many aspects and challenges of a start-up, but it also has some of the advantages of being a big company with a lot of legacy."