VERITAS unveils new application and storage resource management solutions to improve performance for Middle East businesses

VERITAS recently completed the acquisition of Precise Software Solutions (Nasdaq: PRSE), the leader in application performance management (APM) market, a high-growth market that industry analysts such as IDC predict will grow to $4.92 billion by 2006. This acquisition allows VERITAS to now enable better performance of a company's enterprise applications by accelerating the rate at which data can be accessed. A viable utility computing model requires fast, reliable access to data and applications, and only VERITAS can offer this capability from application to storage.

VERITAS has also announced the availability of its new VERITAS OpForce 3.0 solution, based on technology from the acquisition of Jareva Technologies earlier this year. VERITAS OpForce 3.0 is designed to improve the utilization of existing IT environments by intelligently provisioning resources such as servers, switches and load balancers across computer networks. Expanding VERITAS technologies beyond its storage software stronghold, VERITAS OpForce software will help IT departments evolve to a utility computing model that delivers IT as a measurable, always-on service aligned with business goals and directions.

"In simple terms, VERITAS' recent acquisitions have created a comprehensive application and storage resource management offering for our end-users, coupled with the capability to provision existing hardware resources on-the-fly as business needs change. VERITAS has developed an infrastructure that not only diagnoses application performance problems, but allocates the necessary technology resources to improve performance and ensure that a company's IT environment is efficiently meeting the business requirements of that organization - the embodiment of the utility computing concept," commented Mike Hynes, regional manager, VERITAS Middle East.

"The good news for VERITAS' Middle East customers is that utility computing offers them considerable business advantages by increasing the availability and performance of their applications while lowering the cost of their existing hardware and reducing the overall complexity of IT environments," he added.

In order to boost awareness about the benefits conferred by VERITAS' utility computing strategy, VERITAS Middle East is working with regional distributors Mindware and Tech Data to pilot its new storage resource management solutions at more than 10 customer sites throughout the region. The company anticipates that industries which require the greatest levels of application and information availability, including telecommunications, banking, and energy, will be among the first to embrace VERITAS' utility computing offerings.

New Solutions Highlight and Correct Performance Problems
VERITAS' new i3 application performance management solution is designed to proactively detect application performance problems before the end user notices them, to identify the root cause of the problems, and help to correct them. The newly acquired VERITAS i3 technology analyzes the total system performance, from application to storage, and correlates the results across all application tiers, isolating the root cause of performance degradation. Once the root cause is identified, the software recommends solutions so that corrective action can be taken.

With the close of the Precise acquisition, VERITAS also expands its storage resource management (SRM) suite. Precise StorageCentral™, the leading storage resource management software focused on file and quota management in Windows environments, becomes VERITAS StorageCentral™. VERITAS StorageCentral allows IT organizations to reclaim disk space, automatically control storage growth and allocation, ultimately reducing storage and administrative costs. The StorageCentral software gives customers increased control of Windows file and print server environments, controlling storage capacity and improving server availability. VERITAS StorageCentral software will be available through qualifying VERITAS distributors and reseller partners.

Middle East-based companies can soon also deploy VERITAS OpForce™ 3.0, the latest version of the company's automated server provisioning software that helps reduce the time, costs and resources traditionally needed to deploy servers in IT environments. Historically, IT administrators have been forced to manually set up, configure and provision servers in heterogeneous data centers—allocating the most powerful servers to handle peak loads at specific times. During off-peak times these same servers are often under-utilized, sometimes sitting idle. In fact, industry analyst firm Forrester Research estimates average server utilization rarely exceeds 20 percent, leaving valuable computing resources largely untapped. VERITAS OpForce software allows administrators to quickly and automatically reallocate under-utilized servers to "hotspots" in the network where their computing power can be best put to use.

"It's incumbent upon IT departments around the Middle East to drive increased performance from their existing technology environments, and VERITAS' new technologies delivers the tools to achieve that greater capacity and computing power. These solutions enable companies in the region to more closely integrate their storage strategies with the performance of their applications and hardware, resulting in a more agile and easily managed infrastructure," Hynes concluded.