Veritas Regroups

Veritas Software Corp. (Nasdaq: VRTS) has regrouped its engineering, product management, and marketing functions into three new units and made Mark Bregman its CTO (see Veritas Triple Header).

The move is in step with the company's stated purpose to move away from being a storage specialist and toward being a utility computing company. It also officially hands the technology keys to Bregman, who is the first CTO to take the spot since Fred van den Bosch left last March (see Veritas Loses CTO Again). At that time, Bregman, an ex-IBMer who joined Veritas in 2002, took over van den Bosch's duties without taking on the full-fledged CTO title. Instead, he served as EVP of product operations.

That's changed now. Bregman's taking the CTO mantle officially, and he's also become acting manager for one of the three new product groups -- Application and Service Management. That's just until a new manager can be found, a spokesperson says, to allow Bregman to focus entirely on his CTO duties.

The other two groups, Data Protection and Storage and Server Management, are overseen by EVPs Jeremy Burton and Kris Hagerman, respectively. Both report directly to Veritas CEO Gary Bloom, as does Bregman.

Table 1: Veritas New Groups, With Management and Products

As CTO, Bregman continues the oversight of Veritas's Asia/Pacific engineering centers in Beijing and Pune, India. Day-to-day operations remain under the purview of Steven Leonard, senior VP and general manager of Veritas Asia/Pacific.

Wall Street analysts barely noted the announcement. "I don't think it's a big deal. They've been reporting in three groups for awhile," said one, who asked to remain unnamed. "This continues their focus on utility computing."

Oddly, though, Veritas appears to be fiddling with wording in that regard, as well. While its latest financial report in June cited three product areas, the nomenclature was subtly different -- data protection, storage management, and utility computing infrastructure.

Still, the analyst noted above thinks that whatever gets the job done is fine. "Their real problem is sales, so anything that helps focus product development is probably a good thing." In its announcement, though, Veritas was clear that sales and service organizations "remain unchanged," under the supervision of Art Matin, EVP of worldwide sales.

A Veritas spokeswoman said the changes do not reflect any layoffs or consolidation, but in fact have resulted in several new positions, chiefly in marketing.— Mary Jander, Site Editor, Byte and Switch