Symantec Chief Executive Officer John Thompson says his company's US$13.5 billion acquisition of Veritas Software is moving ahead, with the merged company set to offer enterprises a "holistic" grouping of integrated products to more easily deal with issues of security, data backup, and compliance.

While the wide range of products to be offered by the merged company has given some pause, Thompson on Tuesday said the new portfolio will make sense to CTOs looking for integrated, easy-to-manage security systems.

"There is very little overlap in the product portfolio. That's what makes this transaction easier than others where there is enormous redundancy of products," Thompson said, speaking at the Lehman Brothers 2005 Global Software and IT Services Conference in California. His remarks were made available on Symantec's Web site.

Symantec sells software to protect enterprise and home computer systems and networks, including firewalls and tools to detect viruses and network intrusions. Veritas offers backup, archiving and file system software. About three-quarters of the combined company's revenue will come from enterprise products and services, Thompson said.

"We are bringing together the leading security (Symantec) and leading availability (Veritas) software," Thompson said. "We think (the merger) has addressed issues of costs, complexity and compliance in a heterogeneous software portfolio."

Thompson said sales teams are being reorganized to present customers with an attractive package of security and backup products.

Symantec's decision to buy Veritas was brought on by the belief that technology had become too complex and expensive for large enterprises to manage in a piecemeal fashion, Thompson said. "Consolidation is inevitable," he said.

Following that trend, Symantec in the last two years has acquired PowerQuest, a backup technology vendor; anti-spam and e-mail threat defense software maker Brightmail; configuration management vendor On Technology; and @stake, a security auditing and consulting company.

With an eye toward Microsoft's advances in the security market, Thompson said the new company will offer products that work with different platforms and environments, including Linux.

"There is a complete software stack in security and availability for multiple platforms in large enterprises," he said.