Network Appliance, Inc. (NASDAQ: NTAP) and VERITAS Software Corporation (NASDAQ: VRTS) today announced the availability of new integrated disk-based data protection and data management solutions for multi-vendor environments. The new, highly interoperable solutions will enable enterprise customers to reduce backup times, simplify management and dramatically decrease disk consumption.

The two companies have integrated the latest version of VERITAS NetBackup software (see related press release issued today) with NetApp NearStore storage systems and SnapVault software to help customers significantly reduce their backup and restore times with disk-based protection, while still retaining data on tape for long-term archival and disaster recovery -- all through a common management console. The joint solution will support all major operating systems, including: HP-UX, IBM AIX, Microsoft Windows and Novell NetWare.

The companies have also collaborated to integrate VERITAS Enterprise Vault 6.0 software (see related press release issued today) with NetApp NearStore and SnapLock products to offer mutual customers powerful solutions to help customers cope with growing compliance and regulatory requirements by delivering solutions that allow them to transparently archive data and quickly retrieve specific information as needed.

"By bringing together these products, VERITAS and NetApp are working to turn innovation in data management into real-world solutions for customers," said Sanjay Poonen, vice president, Strategic Alliances, VERITAS Software. "This integration effort offers customers complete, end-to-end enterprise data management -- from Snapshot copies to long-term tape storage -- through a single, simplified console, resulting in fewer management headaches and ultimately lower cost of ownership."

LandAmerica Financial Group, Inc. is a leading provider of title insurance and real estate transaction services globally and has been a NetApp NearStore and VERITAS NetBackup customer since 2002. LandAmerica's data protection solution provides backup-and-recovery for enterprise data associated with various applications that include Microsoft Exchange Server and SQL Server. "We have been using VERITAS NetBackup software along with NetApp NearStore to protect and restore our customers' business-critical data, such as customer title applications and commercial property assessments," said Jack Kinsey, enterprise services manager, LandAmerica Financial Group. "We selected the powerful NetApp and VERITAS combination to provide rapid data recovery and accommodate rapid data growth while lowering our storage total cost of ownership. We have consolidated and simplified the management of NetApp SnapVault software for our NearStore system by leveraging NetBackup software's integrated console. This allows us to streamline backup-and-restore processes by minimizing data volume backups and restoring point-in-time data snapshots."

"VERITAS and NetApp are continuing their long-standing collaboration on solutions that reduce the complexity and cost of comprehensive enterprise data protection," said Patrick Rogers, vice president, Products and Partners at Network Appliance. "Tight integration between NetApp storage systems and software and VERITAS NetBackup and Enterprise Vault software provides customers with improved backup performance, rapid data recovery, reduced media management costs, and increased integration of backups into business processes. In addition, our joint solutions support backup from all the leading storage platforms, providing a truly complete offering."

The deep collaboration between VERITAS and NetApp has yielded several next-generation capabilities for customers using solutions combining VERITAS NetBackup 6.0 and NetApp NearStore, such as:

- Common management through the complete data protection process. VERITAS NetBackup 6.0 software will provide a single management interface for heterogeneous disk-to-disk-to-tape protection, including management of NetApp Snapshot, SnapRestore and SnapVault software for comprehensive storage system protection. Administrators can easily set policies for efficient data protection across the entire lifecycle.

- Block-level elimination of duplicate or redundant data. The solutions eliminate redundant data blocks during the backup process to prevent storage of duplicate information on NearStore and significantly reduce backup-media consumption.

- Increased disk-based backup performance. NetApp and VERITAS have developed new protocols to enable rapid backups to the NearStore disk array which eliminate common disk-based backup bottlenecks and complexity.

- Faster, simpler recovery. The integrated solutions provide administrators and even end-users a view of backup files in their native format, just as they would see them on a shared server. Users or IT managers can rapidly search through hundreds of consolidated online backups and perform drag-and-drop restores of individual files or folders directly from the NetApp NearStore system.

"We have a strong partnership with both NetApp and VERITAS that allows us to offer our customers complete and best-in-class data protection solutions," said Greg Meland, CEO, Datalink. "With the new integrated solutions from NetApp and VERITAS, our customers will benefit from access to a simplified data protection strategy which allows them to manage all data protection stages from a single interface, including Snapshot and SnapRestore management for short-term protection and instant recovery, SnapVault and disk-to-disk backups for quick recovery as well as NDMP tape backups for traditional storage."

Cooperative Support Helps Customers Optimize Enterprise Storage

NetApp and VERITAS have also made significant investments in joint support and training to provide customers more advanced, integrated support solutions for optimizing their data storage and protection requirements. The companies have collaborated on joint support at all levels of the enterprise, including tighter integration between the NetApp Global Services support team and VERITAS' Business Critical enterprise support teams to provide a unified support relationship and service for the customer.

"The cooperative support agreement allows both NetApp and VERITAS to focus on customer satisfaction by quickly and efficiently resolving problems and/or preventing issues before they happen," said Phil Williams, vice president, NetApp Global Services. "This cooperative environment will save customers time, improve the quality of support, and reduce complexities for customers who use solutions provided by both companies. Mission-critical issues can now be escalated from one company to the other 24/7, which will eliminate redundancies and ensure that the customer has the appropriate resources working to support their data storage needs."

NetApp and VERITAS will provide demonstrations of the joint solution at Booth #201 at VERITAS VISION 2005, April 25-27th in San Francisco.