A year after unveiling plans to unload its data protection business in a push to refocus on driving growth, Symantec Inc. is finally moving forward with the break-up, although not quite as originally intended. While chief executive Michael Brown initially envisioned separating his outfit into two separate publicly-traded entities, its other half is now being sold to private investors for $8 billion in cash.

The biggest portion of the mammoth sum will come from Carlyle Group LP and GIC, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, which are leading the takeover on behalf of their co-buyers. That position entails, among other aspects, the responsibility of choosing the leadership of the new company, which in retrospect was deliberately left vacant by Symantec in anticipation of such a sale.

The consortium has decided on Bill Coleman, the founder of information management specialist BEA Systems, Inc., as CEO and former 3COM Corp. boss Bill Krause as chairman. Both are veteran executives that have seen their respective companies sold to established vendors, the former to Hewlett-Packard Co., which is incidentally also pursuing a split-up.

After the deal closes sometime the next year, Veritas, as the company carved out of Symantec’s unwanted assets has been named, will begin operations as an independent provider of data protection software for enterprises. Much of its portfolio will consist of the solutions that the antivirus giant gained through the acquisition of its namesake firm in 2005 for $13.5 billion.

That’s 60 percent more than the value of the sale, but also factoring into the calculation is the fact that Symantec purchased Veritas at the height of its profitability and has managed to squeeze a great deal out of the purchase before the start of the declines that ultimately led to the break-up. The company expects to be left with $6.3 billion once all the expenses involved in the transaction have been deduced.

Nearly that a quarter of that, $1.5 billion, will go towards Symantec’s share buyback program in an effort to prop up its stock while the rest is being spent on trying to reverse the weakening demand for its security software. If history is anything to go by, that effort will likely entail a renewed wave of acquisitions on top of the usual increase in internal engineering budgets.

As for Veritas, its new owners and leadership face a similar challenge amid increasing competition in the data protection space that has already proven too much for Symantec to handle. It’s an uphill battle with $8 billion at stake, but the sheer size of the transaction suggests a degree of confidence that will be very much needed for their efforts to realize a return over the coming years.

Photo via Geralt