'We are platform-agnostic, and will remain so'

It was largely a low-profile merger but one that can have far-reaching implications for the world of storage. Legato Systems is a strong storage software player, particularly in the domain of backup and recovery applications. On October 21, 2003, storage hardware giant EMC completed the acquisition of Legato, thus adding more muscle to its software ambitions. Legato will now function as a separate division within EMC. In an interview with Dataquest,
David B Wright, earlier CEO of Legato Systems and now executive vice-president of EMC (also president of the Legato software division) talks about the merger and its implications:

l How will the EMC—Legato merger impact the global storage landscape, in terms of storage products and technologies, and storage industry dynamics? 

EMC and Legato have significant resources to increase and accelerate delivery of information management software solutions to customers, as well as to continue to provide leading Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) solutions to the marketplace.

David B Wright

Executive vice-president of EMC

“Our customers see the acquisition as we do–a big positive for them–given that our open software solutions run on all operating systems, hardware platforms or applications”

For example, fast backup and recovery is clearly important to our customers. Legato Software’s core technology provides EMC with a strong base to accelerate its strategy in this area. In addition, one of the high-growth areas in backup/recovery is disk-based backup. 

l Legato is already the No. 3 player in backup and recovery applications. What advantages do you see in merging with a much bigger vendor with aspirations in both storage hardware and software? 

As one company, EMC and Legato will allow customers to get the maximum value from their information at the lowest total cost of ownership at every stage in the information lifecycle, from creation and active use to archiving and disposal. No other company offers such an attractive combination. Legato and EMC are positioned better than ever to serve the emerging needs of our customers and partners. 

l Legato Systems is known for software that runs on all hardware platforms. Will this interoperability be affected due to the merger with a huge hardware vendor? 

No, not at all. EMC and its Legato software division remain completely committed to providing open software, supporting a broad base of heterogeneous servers, operating systems, and storage. Legato software’s solutions will continue to be completely platform agnostic or ‘open’. While we have combined our engineering efforts as well as many back office functions, we have kept Legato Software’s sales, service and distribution efforts independent to ensure that we can maintain a focus on this open software. Legato will accelerates the evolution of EMC from a storage platform vendor into the world’s leading provider of comprehensive information storage solutions for multi-vendor storage environments. 

l EMC has been busy buying a lot of software companies in the recent past, the latest one being Documentum. How significant a role will the erstwhile Legato Systems play after coming in the fold of the merged entity? 

We will remain a division of EMC and will continue to deliver open solutions for information management. The pending Documentum acquisition is extremely exciting as we have complementary technologies in many areas. There will definitely be synergies between the two companies moving forward. When you add Documentum to the union of EMC and Legato, it represents a coming together of three information-centric leaders, which, combined, can offer comprehensive ILM solutions for customers. 

l Your competitor, Veritas, has sought to exploit the confusion in the minds of Legato customers by aggressively marketing its conversion program. How do you plan to tackle customer anxiety, and a possible churn? 

It’s interesting to note that not very long ago, Veritas was dismissing us as a competitor. Now, since the acquisition was announced, they have been aggressively targeting us–to little avail, I might add. Customers I have talked to have been extremely excited about the acquisition, and see it as we do–a big positive for them. What’s important to us, is what’s important to our customers–open software solutions that help them better manage their information, regardless of the operating system, hardware platform or application. We’ve continued to demonstrate our commitment to customers by providing real solutions to their IT and business problems, and by delivering world-class customer support. The combination of this continued commitment with the performance and value that our solutions provide our customers is driving our business results. In the third quarter, we announced record revenues. Customers continue to choose Legato to help them solve their problems, shown by the fact that our partners and we have done over 200 replacements of competing technology this year.

 To reiterate, we continue to focus on our customers and their needs. 

l A few lawsuits filed by Legato shareholders accuse Legato executives and its board of manipulating the deal to protect an executive retention bonus plan, and of timing the announcement to increase the likelihood that the proposal will be accepted by shareholders. What is your response? 

We believe that allegations in these suits are baseless and therefore do not merit any further deliberation. However, we will defend the company and the individual defendants vigorously. 

l Given the potential of the Indian market, do you have a specific strategy in place for the post-merger entity? 

As a division of EMC, we are committed to the same principles we had prior to the acquisition. There is a tremendous opportunity for customers in India to take advantage of our solutions. Specifically, backup and recovery, e-mail management and high availability are important focus areas for us in India as they represent key customer pain points. Now, with EMC, we can only strengthen our ability to provide solutions that customers need.

RISHI SETH in New Delhi