Brussels, 17/03/2005 (Agence Europe) - The Commission has given the go-ahead to plans by the American company Symantec Corp to buy its fellow American software company Veritas Software Corp, for a sum in the region of 13.5 billion dollars. Symantec produces security software (data protection, anti-virus, firewalls etc) and services linked to its software products, and Veritas makes data storage and protection software. Upon examination, the Commission found that the overlaps of activity between the two companies would be very limited and that many powerful competitors, with considerable shares of the market, would continue to operate in the field. It believes that bringing together security and storage software would not cause competition problems in terms of subordination or interoperability, due to the existence of many alternative sources of supply. Lastly, the choice of the purchasers would not change greatly, regardless of the IT environment in which their software worked.