Veritas is considering significant changes to its software licencing strategy that may include the addition of pricing schemes geared to the Asia Pacific market.

Mark Bregman, Veritas executive vice president, product operations, said the storage management software specialist's Singapore operation was currently studying the Asia Pacific region with a view to giving its pricing and licencing terms a -regional and local focus".

According to IT analyst firm Gartner, the company's flagship backup products, Netbackup and Backup Exec, have a commanding 48 percent lead in the backup software market. However, Phillip Seargant, research director for servers and storage, Gartner Asia Pacific, said that the products have also gathered a reputation for being expensive.

And he believes that is unlikely to change with the release of the latest version of NetBackup, unveiled last week. NetBackup is selling at US$5000 per system license, with the optional desktop and laptop backup module setting back the enterprise coffers an extra US$2500 per server.

Bregman conceded that some firms and members of the analyst community had questioned the company's US-centric pricing model but fended off commentator criticism, saying that the market was willing to bear the price.

-If the price is too high they don't pay it. If they're willing to pay for it, it's probably about right," said Bregman.

However Sargeant believes that the software's pricing will create problems for the company as it attempts to gain market share in emerging markets such as China and Vietnam.

According to Sargeant, enterprise customers in less developed Asia Pacific economies were likely to be lured by more attractively priced packages offered by Veritas's competitors such as Legato, IBM and Hewlett-Packard.

-I don't think our pricing practices are very different from other enterprise software vendors in the region," said Bregman.

With some Asian governments arguing that software pricing should be tied to local economic conditions, Microsoft has shown limited willingness to be flexible, contributing heavily discounted versions of its Office software for Thailand's subsidised personal computer scheme. However so other major enterprise vendors are yet to follow suit.

Bregman played down the pricing issue saying that Veritas was more concerned with setting appropriate terms and conditions as it moves from a locked-down system-licensing model to toward a more flexible scheme, as its utility computing model matures.

Bregman said the locked-down system-licensing scheme -- which requires each system to be licensed individually -- was useful for preventing piracy, but said that its large U.S. and European customers were looking for a more flexible arrangement.

An alternative model, said Bregman would to allow companies to deploy the software under the supervision of a -monitoring or audit tool," which would be used for invoicing.

However it's clear that the company has some concerns about offering such a tool in some Asia Pacific economies.

-Now it's a question of 'do we trust you or not?'," said Bregman.

Bregman said that the licensing tool was a viable option in countries like the U.S., Australia, as well as Western Europe -- places where IP enjoys strong legal protections -- but that Veritas -might do it differently in regions where there are big issues with piracy."

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