Veritas considers further acquisitions

Storage management software company Veritas may well hit the acquisition trail again as spending on IT starts to pick up.

However, the traditionally acquisitive company probably won't do another 'mega-deal' such as the one that saw it buy Seagate Software's Network and Storage Management Group in a complex $3.5bn transaction in 1998.

Gary Bloom, Veritas CEO, told today's FT: "We are so far ahead of competitors that a merger of equals cannot occur."

Other storage industry giants, such as EMC, tend to offer software which isn't hardware independent, one of the reasons for Veritas' growth.

However, with an eye on a new market, Bloom added: "We might consider the application software sector, adding an extra layer on top of what we already have."