Acronis has hired a new CEO to help it ride the twin booms in the market for data and cyber-protection, with a view toward increasing sales through channel partners — especially managed services providers.
It has appointed Patrick Pulvermueller as CEO, effective 1 July, 2021. Founder, largest shareholder, and prior CEO since 2103, Serguei Beloussov, becomes Acronis’s Chief Research Officer, and will direct the company’s technology and research strategy across its product areas.
A quote accompanying the announcement from Beloussov said: “I’m proud of Acronis’s success to date and believe now is the perfect time to pass the baton to Patrick.
“We did an extensive search for an outstanding leader and Patrick’s track record of success, partner-led approach, and operational expertise were obvious strengths. He has the experience to continue pushing Acronis’s mission, improve our operations, and build a multi-billion dollar revenue stream — taking the organisation, the product portfolio, and our partnerships to the next level.”
The CEO change comes just two months after Acronis took in a massive $250 million in its third funding round since startingd up in 2003. It received a valuation of $2.5 billion and said at the time that growing its partner network, particularly managed service providers (MSPs), was critical to the company’s strategy for rapid growth.
Background
Pulvermueller comes from being President of hosting company GoDaddy’s Partner Business — pushing its hosting, productivity, and security services out through resellers and agency partners. GoDaddy has more than 20 million customers and over 7000 staff worldwide. Acronis, with over 1600 employees, has more than 5.5 million home users and 500,000 business customers, with products sold through 50,000-plus partners around the world. The business market is its main focus.
In general, Acronis plans to expand its partner network, which includes MSPs, managed security service providers (MSSPs), hosting partners, cloud distributors, cloud aggregators, network service providers, and others.
Before joining GoDaddy, Pulvermueller had been CEO at Host Europe and Group CEO at Host Europe Group, so he has that experience as well.
Acronis board chairman René Bonvanie also supplied an announcement quote, saying: “Given Patrick’s demonstrated expertise in helping rapid growth companies scale and proven success in a channel-centric environment, we are confident he will accelerate Acronis’ success and prepare the company for the next stage.”
He prefaced this with: “Having added more than $1.5 billion in valuation during the past 18 months, Acronis is on a tremendous growth trajectory thanks to the cyber protection strategy put in motion by Serguei.”
That “tremendous growth trajectory” is going to be accelerated by Pulvermueller, who said of his appointment: “Acronis is poised to disrupt the data protection and cybersecurity markets while redefining how service providers leverage remote monitoring and management (RMM) and professional services automation (PSA) services. I look forward to contributing my knowledge and experience in the service provider business to ensure we take full advantage of that opportunity.”
Comment
Blocks & Files thinks that the VCs will want a return on their investment, and that this could come from an IPO or through Acronis being taken private, Veeam-style. Insight Partners bought Veeam for $5 billion in January 2020.
If Pulvermueller can pull off a $5 billion-plus IPO or buyout, Acronis stockholders should be well pleased.
