The data storage and protection provider makes a play for the very small end of the market with the acquisition of Certified Backup.AmeriVault
Corp., a data storage and protection provider, has agreed to acquire Certified
Backup, an online data backup vendor focused on the small and home business
market.
AmeriVault, of Waltham, Mass., uses the
outsourcing model to provide offsite disk-to-disk data protection and recovery
services including online data backup, e-mail archiving and data replication,
mostly to SMBs (small and medium-sized businesses) ranging from 50 to 1,000
employees.
The acquisition of Certified Backup,
also based in Waltham, is expected to extend AmeriVault's reach into the small
and home-based business market. The first step, said AmeriVault CEO Bud
Stoddard, will be to incorporate the Certified Backup platform into a new
AmeriVault XpressVault product—a move that will allow the company to offer three
levels of service offerings at different price points.
"The Certified Backup product is
similar but is positioned in a lower end than what we're known for, and it's
lower priced and caters to smaller companies," Stoddard said. That's good, he
said, because it expands AmeriVault's reach into the small and home-based
business market.
And unlike other products in
AmeriVault's portfolio, the new AmeriVault XpressVault will not be developed on
the eVault platform, which has been a hallmark of all other offerings developed
by AmeriVault until now.
"Most of what we do is on the eVault
platform, and we wanted to expand out and build a product that didn't rely on
that platform," Stoddard said. "It was all about getting the technology to do
that."
Although Stoddard intends to use
Certified Backup as a way to further permeate the small-business market, he
insists he'll do it using AmeriVault's traditional high-touch, high-service
methods.
"We play at the high-quality,
premium-priced part of the market, and that won't change," he said.
Low-cost storage wares proliferate for home and mobile
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Making a play for the very small end of
the market makes good business sense for AmeriVault, said Arun Taneja, president
of Taneja Group, of Hopkinton, Mass.
"A few years ago, practically every
storage vendor was presenting its product to the enterprise, so the
enterprise-level companies were getting every vendor knocking on their doors
while the SMB companies were hoping just one vendor would call them," he said.
"But in the last 12 to 18 months, storage vendors have begun to realize that the
SMB space is exploding. Announcements like these just show that vendors are
recognizing that the SMB space is where the biggest growth rate will be over the
next few years."
After absorbing Certified Backup,
Stoddard said the company will focus on introducing related services in the
areas of replication, compliance and high availability.
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