With its Sun Microsystems Inc OEM business starting to kick-in, storage management company Veritas Software Corp reported first quarter net income up 67% at $9.1m compared with $5.4m last year on revenue up 53% at $39.1m over $25.6m. Earnings per share were $0.27, beating average estimates by eight cents. Revenue from Sun OEM sales was up 50% over last time – though it wouldn’t say how much that represents – while total OEM business now accounts for 31% of revenue. Pure OEM royalties were up 41% in the quarter, shrink-wrap sales up 54% while revenue from OEMs acting as resellers grew from zero to around $3m in the quarter. Veritas plans to get more aggressive with its Windows NT products which it believes now offer better functionality than arch rival Legato Systems Inc’s NT applications. It’s looking to win ten enterprise NT accounts immediately. Of course it’s awaiting the availability of NT 5.0 which includes a bundled version of its volume management software. That’s still an early 1999 deliverable from Microsoft. It expects revenue from its deal with Hewlett-Packard Co to begin to contribute to the bottom line over the course of the year. It expects to be up to 1,000 employees by year-end. New marketing VP Dave Spenhoff says he’ll expects the company to develop a more cohesive products strategy to better leverage its brand equity. It will begin its first corporate advertising campaign shortly. He’s says the company will use its $100m cash pile and the value of its stock to buy-in technologies and expertise.
