Peribit partners Veritas in marketing deal

Peribit Networks has partnered Veritas Software in a marketing alliance that will see the latter promote Peribit WAN optimisation products alongside Veritas software for data replication and disaster recovery.

Peribit had joined a Veritas partner program, dubbed the Veritas Enabled Program, to help the relatively new entrant to the Australian market connect with Veritas' extensive Australian list of storage software customers, said Michael Paul, Peribit's local country manager.

Peribit resellers such as Net Solutions, Global Net and newly signed XSI Data Solutions would also benefit from the arrangement, he said.

Paul said a "couple of hundred" Veritas customers in Australia were suited to buying Peribit technology, such as Peribit's SM-500 WAN accelerator appliance. The deal would boost both Veritas and Peribit.

"It's probably easier for Veritas to sell our gear than for us to sell theirs because we're an enabling technology [for disaster recovery and data centre replication]," Paul said.

Peribit markets appliances that aim to improve WAN performance by prioritising network traffic, reducing repetitive data patterns and speeding application response times.

"If Veritas wants to sell data replication tools on a WAN they're going to have to use the Peribit product," said Paul. "Ten to 20 megabit links aren't cheap and if you can find any way to minimise the cost, that's what Peribit does," he said.

The arrangement was the first time a network optimisation player such as Peribit had partnered with a storage software vendor in Australia, Paul said.

The SM or Sequence Mirroring family of caching and compression appliances support Network Sequence Mirroring -- technology for recognising data patterns and reducing traffic that must be retransmitted over WAN links.

"We're hoping to train the Veritas guys here in Australia early in the new year," Paul said.

"Hopefully they'll know more, so when they go out as Veritas consultants they'll be able to give a succinct [demo] on how [Peribit technology] works," he said.

He added it was still too early to gauge what effect Symantec's recent merger with Veritas would have on the arrangement.

"I guess it would have some sort of bearing at the end of the day," he said.