Computer Associates Challenges Veritas
In a statement released on Tuesday, Computer Associates International (CA) warned CA clients of misleading claims made by Veritas Software Corporation that its Backup Exec range of backup products can read ARCserve format media. CA issued a challenge to Veritas to restore, within four hours of receipt, a backup tape created using the standard ARCserveIT for Windows NT version 6.61. In the event Veritas succeeds, CA pledges to donate $10,000 to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), an organization that spearheads national efforts to locate and recover missing children, and challenges Veritas to make a similar commitment.
"This is not the first, and unfortunately, won't be the last time that a competitor like Veritas, makes claims that it cannot substantiate," says Peter Malcolm, CA's Senior Vice President of Storage Business Management. "However, when Veritas attempts to mislead CA clients, it's time for us to challenge the company to put its money where its mouth is."
On June 20, CA announced ARCserve 2000, the latest version of the company's data protection solution. ARCserve 2000 supports new features such as serverless backup, the so-called "killer" SAN application, a major advance in backup technology, and a feature not available in any Veritas product.
Under this challenge, the tape would be created using a device on Veritas' supported device list for its Backup Exec 8.0 product and will contain approximately 100MB of data in files of differing size. An independent third party, to be nominated by Veritas, and acceptable to CA, would supervise the creation of the tape, confirm that ARCserveIT can restore it and deliver it to Veritas. In order to verify Veritas' ability to restore the tape, a text file containing a message determined by the third party will be included. Four hours after delivery of the tape to Veritas, the third party will name the file and its location, and ask Veritas to identify the message it contains. If Veritas fails to do so within 10 minutes it will be deemed to have lost the challenge.
For more information, visit www.ca.com.