In 1987, Chrysler Corporation engaged Control Data Corporation to write a backup software solution. A small group of engineers (Rick Barrer, Rosemary Bayer, Paul Tuckfield and Craig Wilson) wrote the software. Other Control Data customers later adopted it for their own needs.
In 1990, Control Data formed the Automated Workstation Backup System business unit. The first version of AWBUS supported two tape drives in a single robotic carousel with the SGI IRIX operating system.
In 1993, Control Data renamed the product to BackupPlus 1.0 (this is why many NetBackup commands have a ‘bp’ prefix). Software improvements included support for media Volume Management and Server Migration/Hierarchical Storage Management.
In late 1993, Openvision acquired the product and Control Data’s Storage Management 12-person team. This is why, on UNIX platforms, NetBackup installs into /usr/openv. During this time, Open Vision renamed Backup Plus to NetBackup.
On May 6, 1997 Veritas acquired Openvision, including absorption of the NetBackup product line.
In 2005 Symantec acquired Veritas and NetBackup became a Symantec product. Also at that time, Symantec released NetBackup 6.0, the 30th version of the software.