Briefs: June 20, 2005

NETAPP TO ACQUIRE DECRU

The acquisition is expected to close in October, after which Decru will become a business unit within NetApp. With the move, NetApp would become the second major storage vendor to tie storage and security. This week, Symantec and Veritas Software shareholders are slated to vote on the companies' merger.

"In an era where data is a precious asset and security threats to that data are accelerating, encryption is a key element of any data infrastructure," said Dan Warmenhoven, CEO of NetApp. "The combination of Decru with NetApp strengthens our own data-protection portfolio and gives more customers the opportunity to purchase Decru products with the confidence that they'll get the support, service and continuous innovation that distinguish NetApp in data management."

Decru's DataFort appliances insert a layer of encryption, authentication, access control and compartmentalization into storage. The products add security to data at wire speed when combined with SAN, NAS, direct-attached, iSCSI and tape storage devices from various vendors to protect data across a network and in the storage hardware. The appliances can be deployed without changing customers' current server and storage infrastructures, according to NetApp.

SONY CHANNEL CHIEF NATALE EXITS COMPANY
Joe Natale, general manager of channel development at Sony, has left the company, according to a spokeswoman.

Natale oversaw distribution and channel strategy for the IT products unit of the global electronics giant. Earlier this year, solution providers applauded him for running a successful channel effort at the company. In April, Sony tied with Hewlett-Packard in the LCD projector category in CRN's annual Channel Champions awards. Sony also took home the Rookie of the Year honors for its first-ever first-place finish in a category.

No further information was immediately available about Natale's departure or who would replace him in Sony's channel organization.

MCAFEE ENTERCEPT ADDS SUPPORT FOR LINUX PLATFORM
McAfee's Entercept host intrusion-prevention system server agent now supports Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3, the security vendor said last week. The upgrade means added security and availability of applications running on the Linux platform, according to McAfee.

Entercept combines behavioral rules and intrusion-prevention signatures to provide buffer-overflow prevention, application shielding and HTTP traffic intrusion-prevention for Apache, according to McAfee. The addition of Linux support complements Entercept's existing platform support for Windows and Solaris.

IBM TAKES ON VERITAS LINE
IBM this week will start reselling a variety of Veritas Software's storage management and clustering software to its customers and solution providers.

Under a four-year agreement between the two, IBM will offer Veritas Cluster Server, Storage Foundation, Storage Foundation for Oracle RAC and Storage Foundation for Databases as part of its portfolio of xSeries and BladeCenter products. A majority of that business is expected to go through IBM's channel partners, Veritas said.

This marks the first time a Veritas product appears on IBM's price list.

Netline Internet Service Transfers IP To Openexchange Netline Internet Service, a German firm that provides open-source server solutions, said it is transferring its intellectual property, URLs, branding and marketing rights to Openexchange.

Noting that it provides core collaboration engine solutions for Suse Linux Openexchange Server, Netline said the "heart and soul of Open-Xchange will remain in Germany," along with its core development team.

"Moving the company headquarters to the United States made sense for us—it gives us improved access to growth capital and a better finger on the pulse of the U.S. market," said Frank Hoberg, CEO of Netline Internet Service, in a statement.

ADOBE 2Q EARNINGS JUMP ON STRONG SOFTWARE SALES
Adobe Systems reported a fiscal second-quarter profit of $149.8 million, or 29 cents per share, compared with a profit of $109.4 million, or 22 cents per share, in the same period of 2004.

Adobe reported revenue for the quarter, which ended June 3, of $496 million, up 21 percent from $410 million in the year-ago period.

Excluding special items, such as taxes on some revenue from abroad, the software company earned $142.9 million, or 28 cents per share.

Analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial/First Call expected Adobe to earn an average of 27 cents per share on revenue of $491.7 million.

"We're excited about the growth in our business," Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen said. "This is the eighth consecutive quarter we've seen double-digit growth."

Looking ahead to the third quarter, Adobe predicts that earnings will range from 25 cents to 27 cents a share on revenue of $470 million to $490 million.

In April, Adobe announced a deal to buy animation software maker Macromedia for about $3.4 billion in stock. The deal was complicated after Macromedia announced that it would have to restate earnings for six years due to the way it accounted for employee leave.