17 October, 2024
Commvault acquires data backup provider Clumio
It must be M&A season.
Commvault, a publicly traded data protection and management software company, announced Tuesday that it intends to acquire data backup and recovery provider Clumio for an undisclosed sum.
The deal is expected to close in early October. Commvault says it’s not material to its earnings and that it’ll be funded with cash on hand.
Clumio, headquartered in Santa Clara, was founded in 2017 by Poojan Kumar, Kaustubh Patil, and Woon Ho Jung. It largely serves to protect AWS workloads, though it introduced support for Microsoft 365 back in 2020.
As of February, Clumio was notching double-digit millions of dollars for annual recurring revenue — up 400% from 2022 to 2023 — and acquiring customers like Atlassian, Duolingo, and LexisNexus. The firm raised $261 million in venture capital from investors including Index Ventures, NewView Capital, and Sutter Hill Ventures prior to Tuesday’s exit.
“At Clumio, our vision was to build a platform that could scale quickly to protect the world’s largest and most complex data sets,” Kumar, who was recently appointed Clumio’s chairman after stepping down as CEO in June, said in a statement. “Joining hands with Commvault allows us to get our cloud-native offerings to AWS customers on a global scale.”
Commvault CEO Sanjay Mirchandani sees Clumio complementing Commvault’s existing “cyber resilience” tools for software built on AWS. Now, he says, Commvault can offer enterprises expanded choice to protect and recover their data and cloud-native apps.
AWS-dependent or no, the data backup and recovery market is massive, which no doubt factored into Commvault’s M&A decision. According to market analytics firm KBV Research, the global data backup and recovery sector was worth $12.9 billion in 2023, growing at a compound annual growth rate of 10.9% from 2017 to last year.
Businesses face increasing threats related to ransomware. There’s also the issue of data center disasters like the fire that hit France’s OVH in 2021, leading to significant data loss. In some countries, data management-related regulations like the EU AI Act are coming into force, many with strict data retention and provenance stipulations.
“In the event of an outage or cyberattack, rapidly getting back to business is paramount to our customers,” Mirchandani said in a press release. “Combining Commvault’s industry-leading cyber resilience capabilities with Clumio’s exceptional talent and technology advances our recovery offerings, strengthens our platform, and reinforces our position as a leading software-as-a-service provider for cyber resilience.”
The news comes on the heels of Commvault’s purchase of cloud app resilience company Appranix earlier this year and after Commvault’s expectation-beating Q1 results.
Commvault, originally formed in 1988 as a development group in Bell Labs focused on data management, backup, and recovery, was designated a business unit of AT&T and spun off as its own enterprise in the late ’90s. Commvault went public in 2006, at which point it moved its corporate headquarters from Oceanport to Tinton Falls, New Jersey.
Commvault’s other acquisitions to date include software-defined storage startup Hedvig and cybersecurity company TrapX.
Salesforce acquires data management firm Own for $1.9B in cash
Salesforce has acquired Own Company, a New Jersey-based provider of data management and protection solutions, for $1.9 billion in cash.
Own is Salesforce’s biggest deal since buying Slack for $27.7 billion in 2021. The company reportedly considered — but ultimately decided against — purchasing data management software firm Informatica earlier this year.
In a press release, Salesforce GM Steve Fisher said the acquisition “underscores [Salesforce’s] commitment to providing secure, end-to-end solutions that protect our customers’ most valuable data.”
“Data security has never been more critical, and Own’s proven expertise and products will enhance our ability to offer robust data protection and management solutions to our customers,” Fisher continued.
Own, launched in 2015 as OwnBackup (the company rebranded last October), provides a range of enterprise-focused data backup tools and services such as automated backup and disaster recovery.
The initial idea was to use software-as-a-service vendors’ open APIs, including Salesforce’s, to extract and back up data from a company’s applications. Beyond Salesforce apps, Own supported SaaS apps hosted on AWS and Microsoft.
Founded by Ariel Berkman, Daniel Gershuni and Eran Cohen, Own managed to raise $507.3 million from investors including Tiger Global, BlackRock, Insight Partners, Vertex Ventures and Salesforce’s own Salesforce Ventures prior to today’s buyout (per Crunchbase).
As of August 2021, Own was valued at $3.35 billion.
It’s a high valuation — but perhaps one justified by the massive size of the data backup and recovery segment. According to market analytics firm KBV Research, the global data backup and recovery sector was worth $12.9 billion in 2023, growing at a compound annual growth rate of 10.9% from 2017 to last year.
The reasons for the growth are myriad.
Businesses face increasing threats related to ransomware. There’s also the issue of data center disasters like the fire that hit France’s OVH in 2021, leading to significant data loss. In some countries, data management-related regulations like the EU AI Act are coming into force, many with strict data retention and provenance stipulations.
Today, Own has close to 7,000 customers and hundreds of employees. The company offers a portfolio of data archiving, seeding, security and analytics capabilities that have greatly expanded beyond the company’s early product. Own CEO Sam Gutmann sees Own complementing Salesforce’s existing data management tooling and “enabl[ing] Salesforce to offer a more comprehensive data protection and loss prevention set of products.”
That’d be a natural evolution for Own. As my colleague Ron Miller previously wrote, the majority of the company’s backup and recovery business involves the Salesforce ecosystem.
“We’re excited to join forces with Salesforce, a company that shares our commitment to data resilience and security,” Gutmann said in a statement. “Together with Salesforce, we’ll deliver even greater value for our customers by driving innovation, securing data and ensuring compliance in the world’s most complex and highly regulated industries.”
Salesforce expects the transaction to close in Q4 of its fiscal year 2025, subject to regulatory approvals and customary closing conditions.
Halliburton confirms data was stolen in ongoing cyberattack
Energy giant Halliburton has confirmed its systems were hacked and that intruders “accessed and exfiltrated information” following a cyberattack last week.
In a brief filing with government regulators on Tuesday, Halliburton said it was “evaluating the nature and scope of the [stolen] information,” and what data breach notifications it is required to make.
Halliburton last week said it took some of its systems offline following the detection of the cyberattack. The company now says it is “working to identify effects of the incident” on its ongoing oil and fracking operations.
When contacted on Tuesday, Halliburton spokesperson Amina Rivera did not comment or say if the company knows what kinds of data were stolen. “We are not commenting beyond what was included in our filing,” said Rivera.
Halliburton says its “ongoing investigation and response” includes the restoration of its systems and the “assessment of impacted data.” Much of the company’s public-facing systems remain offline at the time of writing, TechCrunch has found.
The oil and fracking giant — one of the world’s largest energy companies — has close to 48,000 employees in dozens of countries, according to its most recent public filings. Halliburton remains largely synonymous with the explosion and oil spill caused by the Deepwater Horizon oil rig disaster in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 (pictured). Halliburton subsequently agreed to plead guilty and settle U.S. government charges for $1.1 billion.
Halliburton has said little else about the ongoing cyberattack. When asked, Halliburton spokesperson Rivera did not dispute the incident was linked to ransomware.
TechCrunch has seen a copy of a ransom note purportedly related to the Halliburton incident that claims to have encrypted and stolen the company’s files. The note says a ransomware gang known as RansomHub is taking credit for the cyberattack.
RansomHub’s dark web leak site, which the gang uses to publish stolen files to extort its victims into paying a ransom, has not yet listed Halliburton as one of its victims. It’s not uncommon for ransomware and extortion gangs to publish the name of its victims when negotiations fall through.
A representative for RansomHub, when reached by TechCrunch, did not comment on the Halliburton hack.
According to a recent U.S. government assessment of the ransomware gang, RansomHub has claimed over 210 victims since its inception in February 2024. The gang is also linked to the cyberattack at U.S. health tech giant Change Healthcare.
Halliburton said it has and will continue to incur expenses related to the cyberattack. Halliburton made $23 billion in revenue during 2023, and its chief executive Jeff Miller made $19 million in total executive compensation during the year.
Halliburton would not say who presently oversees cybersecurity at the company, and would not make them available for an interview.
Do you know more about the Halliburton incident? You can contact this reporter on Signal and WhatsApp at +1 646-755-8849, or by email. You also can contact us via SecureDrop.
CData, which helps orgs use data across apps and build AI models, snaps up $350M
Artificial intelligence startups continue to dominate the headlines with immense venture capital rounds, but there’s enough opportunity out there for companies building tools that make it easier to work with data-heavy applications like AI. That’s especially true for organizations that may still have one foot (or both feet) in the legacy data camp.
In one of the latest examples of that opportunity, a data connectivity solutions provider called CData has picked up a whopping $350 million in growth capital. Sources close to the company confirmed to TechCrunch that the round gives it a valuation of over $800 million, post-money.
CData has around 7,000 large enterprise customers, many of which are not tech companies, but lean on tech heavily — think big healthcare providers, Office Depot, Holiday Inn and the like. CData builds connectors that such enterprises can use to stitch together data from different applications — and different locations, not just in the cloud — more easily.
More recently, the company’s tools saw a boost in demand from customers keen to get in on the AI rush — they saw how CData could be used to build proprietary AI models based on their internal data.
“One of the biggest drivers now for us is this move towards enterprises investing in AI,” said Amit Sharma, the founder and CEO of CData. “You can do a lot with public datasets, but proprietary datasets are very important for organizations. We’re the easiest way for companies to access their proprietary data and use it in their AI workloads.”
Warburg Pincus and Accel invested in the all-equity transaction, which includes both equity and secondary components, Sharma said in an interview this week. There is also a separate debt component on top of the $350 million, although the company is not disclosing more details about that. Before this round, North Carolina-based CData had raised $160 million from a single backer, Updata, which remains an investor with this round.
The funding — to be used both for business and product development — comes on the heels of a strong run of business for the company. CData started off focusing on application integration 10 years ago, Sharma said, but it has evolved with the rise of the so-called “API economy” and cloud computing.
In a nutshell: Many modern applications offer APIs, but they are inconsistent in how they work, and sometimes, there are no clear APIs at all. That’s where CData comes in with its connectors for different apps and data sources, helping knit an organization’s data together more cleanly.
“The challenge with APIs is that each API is very different,” Sharma explained. So, for example, if you are pulling data out of Salesforce using an API, he said, one would have to thoroughly understand how the Salesforce API works. “Your developers would have to understand it. But when you work with our connectors, all of them look alike.” He describes the world of software as a modern “Tower of Babel” and says CData is the solution.
In all, Sharma says CData’s platform has some 270 such connectors, and it has partnerships with some 100 independent software vendors, including Google, Salesforce and Informatica, to help build more user-friendly integrations from their end.
“So when you are using Tableau, you might be using a CData connector inside of it without knowing that you’re actually doing so,” Sharma said.
Indeed, while these connectors definitely include integrations with more traditional applications in areas like accounting and CRM, they are also coming into their own more recently. Businesses that want to work more with AI can use them to tap their data more easily to build customized models for themselves.
CData has to contend with a number of competitors, like Domo, Simba from Insight Software, Fivetran and many others. But it looks like CData’s current customer traction, combined with its focus on solving both legacy integration issues and modern ones around AI, has helped it seal the deal.
“Data connectivity is a critical enabler in a world of intelligent software — any AI, analytics or automation service delivers far better outcomes the more cross-functional data it can access,” said Nate Niparko, a partner at Accel, in a statement. “We’re thrilled to support CData as it builds on its standards for interconnecting the largest catalog of business data.”