Google is buying Actifio, the data management and DR vendor, to beef up its Google Cloud biz. Terms are undisclosed but maybe the price was on the cheap side.
Actifio has been through torrid time this year. The one-time unicorn refinanced for an unspecified sum at near-zero valuation in May. It then instituted a 100,000:1 reverse stock split for common stock which crashed the value of employees’ and ex-employees’ stock options.
Financial problems aside, Google Cloud is getting a company with substantial data protection and copy data management IP and a large roster of enterprise customers.
Matt Eastwood, SVP of infrastructure research at IDC, provided a supporting statement: “The market for backup and DR services is large and growing, as enterprise customers focus more attention on protecting the value of their data as they accelerate their digital transformations. We think it is a positive move for Google Cloud to increase their focus in this area.”
Google said the acquisition will “help us to better serve enterprises as they deploy and manage business-critical workloads, including in hybrid scenarios.” It also expressed commitment to “supporting our backup and DR technology and channel partner ecosystem, providing customers with a variety of options so they can choose the solution that best fits their needs.”
This all suggests Actifio software will still be available for on-premises use.
Ash Ashutosh, Actifio CEO, said in a press statement: “We’re excited to join Google Cloud and build on the success we’ve had as partners over the past four years. Backup and recovery is essential to enterprise cloud adoption and, together with Google Cloud, we are well-positioned to serve the needs of data-driven customers across industries.”
Actifio was started by Ashutosh and David Chang in July 2009. The company took in $311.5m in total funding across A. B, C, D and F-rounds. The latter was for $100m in 2018 at a $1.3bn valuation.
What Actifo brings to Google Cloud
Google Cloud says Actifio’s software:
- Increases business availability by simplifying and accelerating backup and DR at scale, across cloud-native, and hybrid environments.
- Automatically backs up and protects a variety of workloads, including enterprise databases like SAP HANA, Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, PostgreSQL, and MySQL, as well as virtual machines (VMs) in VMware, Hyper-V, physical servers, and Google Compute Engine.
- Brings significant efficiencies to data storage, transfer, and recovery.
- Accelerates application development and reduce DevOps cycles with test data management tools.
