It's hard to Monday morning quarterback bigco software mergers. There's always more going on than rational biz-thinking where two companies are trying to find the perfect fit. There are, after all, humans and big-cash involved. Those two are a combination that can effortlessly lead to making the reason for the merger to do the merger rather than anything else. I mean, look at AOL/Time Warner.
Other observers, however, were left scratching their heads over the Symantec-Veritas deal. Richard Ptak, principal of consulting firm Ptak, Noel & Associates, said he wondered why Symantec chose to merge with Veritas rather than CA--or, better yet, BMC Software--to gain a broader-based infrastructure management solution.
"This would have given Symantec a solid position as a major player in systems management," Ptak said. "Symantec quite clearly left the door open for further acquisitions in this space, but after they have completed this merger. Given the current trend in market consolidation, it is an open question about which firm will be available when Symantec is ready to move. But we would bet they will acquire again."
The most insightful comment about the Symantec-Veritas merger I've come across so far -- in several stories -- is that there's very little overlap between the two companies technologies. Symantec does security, Veritas does data. As such, they won't go into the relationship figuring out what duplicate technology to axe. Usually, with software companies, getting rid of technology is the same as getting rid of the people who work on the technology: the folks who decide who's heads will roll out the door typically don't separate the two. And, of course, you can piss off key people by throwing out one of their "babies." You know, it's like when you move in with your sweetie, and one of you says to the other, "look, I know I you love that couch, but it's gotta go. That couch is so college. It's not going to be in our house." RIP couch: I knew ye well.
More importantly, they won't have to do too much consolidation of architectures, domains, or any of the other nasty things you have to do when you're trying to integrate/merge together similar systems. Most of this type of integration and merging is slowed down by people hurdles -- folks don't want their architecture morphed into something else, they want the something else merged into their architectures -- which are harder to jump over than the "simple" technological hurdles.
Anyhow, larger point being that when it comes to merging software companies, the underlying task of integrating and consolidating the software is always tricky. It's difficult to integrate software together, and it's almost impossible to integrate software people together. In the enterprise software world of today, you figure out those two problems, and you got yourself success.
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