Veritas Software chief technology officer Paul Borrill has resigned
in a continuing series of high-level management changes that began
early this year.
Analysts said nearly a dozen executives have left the storage
management vendor over the past six months. At the same time, the
company has brought in several new senior managers to run its
product and marketing operations and its merger and acquisition
activities.
The dramatic shift in upper management follows a $651m (£417m) net
loss last year and chief executive officer Gary Bloom's assumption
of the chairman's position in January. Bloom took over that job
from Mark Leslie, who he replaced as president and chief executive
officer in November 2000.
Veritas officials and industry analysts alike described the
overhaul as a natural result of the ascension of Bloom, a former
Oracle executive, to the top three jobs at the company.
"Seven vice-presidents left in one week in April," said Michael
Peterson, an analyst at Strategic Research, a storage management
market research firm. "This is Gary's operating style: to replace
Mark Leslie's executive operating team."
A Veritas spokesman said that Bloom has brought in a management
team that "he's very confident with". New members include Mark
Bregman, a longtime IBM executive who was hired by Veritas in
February to oversee product operations, and Jeremy Burton, another
Oracle veteran, who was named chief marketing officer at Veritas in
April.
Veritas, one of the biggest vendors of storage management software,
had $1.5bn (£0.96m) in revenue last year. In the wake of its big
loss for 2001, the company in July reported a net profit of $70.5m
(£45.2m) on revenue of $735.1m (£471.3m) for the first half of this
year.
The management overhaul isn't a sign that Veritas is falling apart,
Peterson claimed. "It's a normal transition that occurs when you
change top execs," he said.
But Anders Lofgren, an analyst at Giga Information Group, said that
Veritas is under more pressure from competitors such as EMC, Sun
Microsystems, Legato Systems and even Microsoft, which last week
announced the first in a promised line of storage management
software for Windows systems.
"I think there's still good technology coming out of Veritas, but
they are feeling the heat more so than they have in the past,"
Lofgren said.