Veritas acquires utility computing firm

Veritas announced Thursday that it has acquired Invio Software in a $35 million cash deal that will give the storage software maker a tool for standardizing and automating the delivery of IT services.

Invio's technology will enable Veritas' clients to customize off-the-shelf templates to identify, manage and automate the delivery of services such as storage provisioning, server provisioning and data protection.

The move to customize and automate the delivery of IT services is gaining steam, with companies that make this type of software becoming acquisition targets. Oracle last month bought Collaxa, which sells a business process management "engine."

"Invio's process automation technology adds another strategic capability to the Veritas utility computing portfolio, helping IT organizations to dynamically deliver services that are measurable, accountable and aligned with business needs," said Mark Bregman, Veritas' executive vice president of product operations, in a statement.

Prior to the acquisition, Veritas was already making use of Invio's process automation engine in its CommandCentral Service 4.0. CommandCentral allows users to create and automate their IT processes by linking together the capabilities of several Veritas products, including OpForce, CommandCentral Storage, Storage Foundation and NetBackup software.

The Invio deal is one of several utility-computing-related acquisitions Veritas has undertaken in the past 20 months. Last year, Veritas acquired Ejasent for $59 million, and in late 2002, the company announced plans to buy Precise Software Solutions and Jareva Technologies.