Veritas announces next version of NetBackup, EVault

Computerworld - SAN FRANCISCO -- Veritas Software Corp. yesterday released the latest version of its leading enterprise backup application, NetBackup, and unveiled several products it expects to release over the next 18 months -- including a continuous data protection application that will allow end users to restore their own files from any point in time.
At its annual user conference here, Veritas told the almost 3,500 customers on hand that it has integrated NetBackup 6.0 with Network Appliance Inc.'s NearStore disk array management interface and SnapLock archival software, creating a single management console for all three products. Mountain View, Calif.-based Veritas said it also has signed a joint support agreement with Sunnyvale, Calif.-based NetApp that allows either company to be the initial point of contact for service calls, no matter which vendor sold the product.
The joint products also support all major operating systems, enabling system recovery across heterogeneous server infrastructures.
LandAmerica Financial Group Inc. in Richmond, Va., uses NetBackup and recently purchased several NetApp Fabric Attached Storage arrays for use in its three main data centers. Tom Lake, a network administrator at LandAmerica, said the joint support of products would be "huge" for him.
"The two vendors working together for a common good will make the administrator's role a lot easier," he said.
William Hurley, an analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group in Milford, Mass., said that while Veritas and NetApp's joint support and technology agreement isn't unique, they "have gone the extra distance" to make their product integration and support transparent.
"When you have that customer at the other end of the line saying, 'I need help,' do you act as one vendor or two?" said NetApp's CEO Dan Warmenhoven. "The goal is for us to act as one vendor."
Veritas said its upcoming version of Enterprise Vault, its e-mail and document management software, will also address personal files or .pst files by searching for those folders on a corporate network so that an administrator can consolidate and compress them in a centrally managed place.
Along with its upcoming product releases, Veritas said it's deploying a Google-like search and retrieval engine that will be available in Enterprise Vault 6.0, due out by July. That version will be the first upgrade to the application since Veritas acquired it with KVS Ltd. last fall.
Mike Sherwood, CIO for the city of Oceanside, Calif., said the municipality's IT shop was an early adopter of Enterprise Vault and is beta-testing the latest version. He said he likes its ability to easily search and retrieve e-mails