News

Veritas to Buy Precise

• By Scott Bekker
• 12/19/2002

Veritas positioned Precise's application performance software for such major business applications as SAP, Oracle, BEA and Microsoft Exchange as fitting with Veritas' value proposition of running mission-critical applications with optimal performance and continuous availability.

Veritas chairman, president and CEO Gary Bloom said in a statement that the combination addresses a "range of customer problems, from performance issues to hardware or software failures to site outages."

In September 2001, Precise acquired Windows storage resource management solution provider W.Quinn Associates for $35 million. Veritas officials said Thursday that the W.Quinn/Precise SRM solution complements Veritas' existing SRM solution.

Precise shareholders and regulators must give the OK before the deal is finalized. The companies expect to close the deal in the second quarter of 2003.

Precise shareholders are being offered $16.50 a share. The ultimate cost of the deal to Veritas is actually closer to $400 million rather than the $537 million it is offering for the Precise shares due to Precise's cash position.

Also on Thursday, Veritas announced it was buying Jareva Technologies for $62 million in cash. Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Jareva developed technology for automated server provisioning. Usage scenarios would include a situation in which servers can be reassigned from running SAP on Windows 2000 to running Oracle on Linux depending on workload and without manual intervention.

In mid-day trading on the Nasdaq, Precise shares were up 4.47 to $16.52, while Veritas was trading 0.69 lower at $16.69.