Veritas Scraps ServPoint Strategy

Veritas Software Corp. (Nasdaq: VRTS) has thrown in the towel on its two-year-old ServPoint NAS and SAN virtualization software -- leaving its hardware partners to integrate the technology into their products instead. It has also laid off most of the people involved, sources close to the company tell Byte and Switch.

In February 2002, Veritas had as many as 80 engineers working on ServPoint and a 35-person sales team to support it. Veritas officials declined to comment on the personnel changes.

The company issued a statement Friday, saying: "We are changing our go-to-market strategy with ServPoint NAS and ServPoint SAN. We will no longer be selling the product as standalone software, but will be offering this technology through our partners in the Veritas Powered program." The only company to step up and sell this so far is MaXXan Systems Inc., which is expected to make a formal announcement to this effect on Feb. 11.

When Veritas relaunched the product line last year, it claimed to have more than 100 customers using the software, although it was never able to provide us with any references. A company spokesman says Veritas notified customers this week that it would discontinue the ServPoint products (see Veritas Has Virtual Djà Vu).

ServPoint was available in two different flavors: The NAS version allowed an IT administrator to provide file-based access to multiple direct-attached storage (DAS) or SAN storage resources; the SAN version, meanwhile, pooled together DAS and centralized management of other elements of the SAN.Veritas was competing head to head with Network Appliance Inc. (Nasdaq: NTAP) in this space, and to a lesser degree with Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT). It turns out its ambition to sell this product as a software-only solution did not gel with customers. "They want an integrated, turnkey NAS solution," a Veritas spokesman said. In other words, the hardware and software together.

Other companies participating in the Veritas Powered Program -- each of which could potentially integrate the ServPoint software with their hardware -- include 3PARdata Inc., Adaptec Inc. (Nasdaq: ADPT), Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO), Emulex Corp. (NYSE: ELX), Inrange Technologies Corp. (Nasdaq: INRG), Maranti Networks, McData Corp. (Nasdaq: MCDTA), NEC Corp. (Nasdaq: NIPNY), Pirus Networks (acquired by Sun Microsystems Inc. [Nasdaq: SUNW]), QLogic Corp. (Nasdaq: QLGC), Rhapsody Networks (acquired by Brocade Communications Systems Inc. [Nasdaq: BRCD]), and XIOtech Corp.