Symantec is selling its information management business, known as Veritas, to an investor group led by The Carlyle Group for $8 billion as it looks to increase its focus on security.
The sale is something Symantec has been working on for the better part of a year. The group buying Veritas also includes GIC, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, and other expected co-investors, Symantec said. Upon closing of the transaction, Symantec expects to receive about $6.3 billion in net cash.
The plan is to return some of the proceeds to shareholders while also giving development of security products and services a cash injection. Like most areas of IT, security is going though a major change thanks to the growing popularity of cloud services.
Symantec first revealed its intention to spin off its information management business in October last year, about 10 years after it acquired Veritas Software in a deal valued at approximately $13.5 billion. The rebirth of the Veritas brand was then announced in January.
For the separated Veritas, adapting products to work well with public and private clouds will also be key. This is something the company is already at work on.
For example, last month it presented an upgraded version of NetBackup. One of the main improvements offered by version 7.7 is better performance and interoperability of backups directed to cloud storage services such as those offered by Amazon Web Services, Google, Hitachi Data Systems, Verizon, and Cloudian, Symantec said at the time.
Other products Veritas will offer are Infoscale, Data Insight and Information Map. The latter is a cloud-based application meant to help enterprises gain better visibility into their unstructured data, according to Symantec.
The transaction is still subject to customary regulatory approvals and other closing conditions.
IDG News Service
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