[FASherman]

ARMONK, NY - 07 Jun 2006: IBM today announced that Symantec, a world leader in providing solutions to help individuals and enterprises assure the security, availability, and integrity of their information, has agreed to port Veritas Cluster Server, Veritas Storage Foundation family and NetBackup recovery technology to the Linux on POWER platform.

Symantec has agreed to support IBM's Linux on POWER platform by porting its high availability, volume and file system management software applications, including: Veritas Cluster Server, Veritas Volume Replicator, Storage Foundation, and Storage Foundation for Oracle® RAC to the IBM portfolio of System p servers. Symantec's support of the platform significantly enhances IBM's ability to provide clients a range of solutions that helps them manage their heterogeneous server and storage infrastructures in a more cost effective and efficient manner.

"Responding to the strong demand for a robust enterprise solution set for Linux on POWER, IBM has entered into this agreement with Symantec," said Ross Mauri, General Manager, IBM System p. "We believe the Symantec products will add even more value to what already is one of the most cost-effective and robust server lines on the market."

Symantec's Veritas Cluster Server helps reduce application downtime and protect everything from a single database instance to globally dispersed clusters across all major operating systems. Veritas Storage Foundation software combines Veritas Volume Manager and Veritas File System to simplify client file system management and improve the utilization of complex storage systems. Veritas Volume Replicator provides a robust storage-independent disaster recovery solution when data loss and prolonged downtime cannot be tolerated by replicating data over any IP network. These offerings are aimed at helping customers accelerate server consolidation strategies, reduce application downtime and improve the performance and manageability of system infrastructure.

Availability

Symantec offerings for Linux on POWER™ are expected to be available starting by the end of 2006.

I find this very, very interesting. For just over 4 years, I was the business development engineer within VERITAS Strategic Alliances responsible for the VERITAS-IBM relationship. I left shortly after the Symantec merger for reasons I won't get into.

For all of that time, IBM pressed us to support Linux on POWER and I steadfastly refused. IBM was (and still is) investing a billion (yes, with a 'b') dollars a year in Linux. That was our ace in the hole. For us to keep that option on the table, IBM had to grant other concessions on AIX.

In fact, before I left, I was negotiating complete support for Linux on POWER in return for just one thing - albeit a big one - the withdrawl of an antiquated (in comparison) HACMP from the market in favor of VERITAS Cluster server.

It would have been a win all around. VERITAS would have commanded 100% marketshare of the HA market on AIX. IBM - who doesn't own HACMP, but merely licenses the technology, would have been guaranteed the same revenue levels as they get from HACMP and the customers (after conversion) would have had a technically superior HA product.

It seems Symantec has abandoned all of that work in favor of incremental revenue.

But for those of you running Linux on POWER, this is a great thing. It means regardless of the platform, AIX, Linux on x86 or Linux on POWER, you can now have one and only one HA solution.

And with Storage Foundation for Oracle RAC, Linux on POWER now has a stable, proven RAC environment that will be easy to install and maintain.

If you run Linux on POWER or are considering it, this is good news indeed.