How Symantec scuppered Veritas sell-off six ways to Sunday

To eff things up x7 is a...

Normal day in Symantec based on the years most of us suffered needlessly there. I bet the Veritas squad, even when taking this pasting are glad to be rid of that lot. Sure they've had a bad quarter which I'd guess no one with a brain (leaves Symantec out!) but they'll in the end be so much better off.

5 til midnight for years now

Veritas was in trouble from day one when Symantec bought them. Everything that monster touches gets bloated and neglected and Veritas was no different. We decided to move away from it (which was the solution we used for years) when we virtualized our network using VMWare and realized that there were so many better options for backing up. We've been using Veeam for about 3 months now (with a weekly Veritas dataset backup on the weekend, just incase) and, although it took some fair amount of tweaking, are much happier now. Why backup just datasets when we can back up the whole VM in less time (and compress the output files enough to shitcan our tape drive and move to SSDs for offsite storage?)

I couldn't think of a reason either.

If Veritas wants to survive, they had better start addressing VM backups. I don't know a single Sysop that hasn't virtualized at least some of their servers at this point.

I'm just really surprised the last version of BEX didn't try to defrag your hard drives and optimize your windows experience, like every other product Symantec pushes out their dusty doors.

º∆º

I find it sad that this article doesn't even mention the coders and technical domain experts without which the whole pile of "sales people" and "leadership staff" at Carlyle's Veritas is just a pile of poo.

@AC: (¿BEX?) Backup Exec is not a good example of Veritas software. (Veritas bought Backup Exec when it was already middle aged). Veritas' core products are the kind of robust software that most companies could only dream about if they weren't so hard at work marketing and patching products which haven't been thoroughly developed and tested.

Optimistic on Veritas Independence Day

It's fair to say that we're always striving to do better. And there were certainly some unusual short term circumstances.This was really a unique quarter, as we finalized the transaction as well as completed operational separation. We're very excited to put that in the rear-view mirror and focus on our customers going forward. We have a lot of talent at Veritas and we’re all looking forward to continuing to serve our customers today and tomorrow with new innovative solutions.

VP, Enterprise Marketing and Corporate Communications, Veritas

Same story, different day!

What really amuses me is that the separation from Symantec has been used as a 'get out of jail free card' for missing worldwide sales in Q1, Q2 and now Q3. And I am very curious where this ERP story originates from as I know for a fact that this has never been a subject before or during the separation. It seems that splitting the operational systems and applications has conveniently been labeled as 'implementing a new ERP system'.

What really surprised me is that Veritas is very keen to put the blame with their own stakeholders with the following quotation: "We initially experienced a higher than normal rate of rejections and cancellations of new and renewal orders, primarily due to some of our customers and partners failing to correctly input the order submission data required to successfully book orders."

As Veritas is a very, VERY channel-driven business I expect that this remark will cause quite some havoc and set a lot of bad blood with Veritas' dedicated partners and distributors.

Sounds like a lot of excuses which are already made in anticipation of missing the Q4 target, which ultimately means that Veritas globally missed their sales target in the entire fiscal year.

In all fairness, their products are very well developed and architecturally designed. It's a shame to see a good proposition in the hands of bad management. Well done.

Symantec/Veritas Sinking Ship?

Having worked there (and being Laid off recently) I can attest to the sinking ship feeling!, Symantec/Veritas RIF-ed (Reduction in Force) many key people during the lead up to the split and instead of trying to hire people (especially in Sales and Sales related roles) what did they do? hiring freeze! and outsourcing to teams in India who were new hires and didn't (and still don't) understand the sales operations and how to manage them, solution? institute a new ERP system, and demand a huge revenue increase from the existing Sales force, Backup Exec is on life support, System Recovery is non existent, Netbackup is trying to hang on but is so poorly licensed as to be impossible to manage and renew, Enterprise Vault and a few other products that they retained nobody knows how to sell, for those who remain the very real feeling is that of the Band playing on the Deck of the Ttitanic as the ship slowly sinks.

Sounds right

You should have seen it from the inside, this story reads of calm competence compared to what it was actually like in that last year, complete and repeated cluster f**ks that changed by the week.

True, failed to input the order data, but ...

"We initially experienced a higher than normal rate of rejections and cancellations of new and renewal orders, primarily due to some of our customers and partners failing to correctly input the order submission data required to successfully book orders."

Probably. We failed to input the data because the web site was broken, and still is. Multiple accounts show up for the same (small) companies. Can't get licenses, or when we do, they're 60-day evaluation licenses labelled as perpetual. No update notifications. Documentation references give 404s. Downloads can't be found.

Hard to buy and use products if you can't get your data processed!