In the same week that Amazon is holding its big AWS confab, Google is also announcing a move to raise its own enterprise game with Google Cloud. Today the company announced that it is acquiring Actifio, a data management company that helps companies with data continuity to be better prepared in the event of a security breach or other need for disaster recovery. The deal tees Google up as a competitor against the likes of Rubrik, another big player in data continuity.
The terms of the deal were not disclosed in the announcement, which said that Actifio will become a part of Google Cloud. We will update as we learn more.
Notably, when the company was valued at over $1 billion in a funding round back in 2014, it had said it was preparing for an IPO (which never happened). PitchBook data estimated its value at $1.3 billion when it again raised money in in 2018, but in June of this year it filed paperwork to raise money at about a 60% discount to its most recent valuation, according to data provided to us by Prime Unicorn Index.
The company was additionally involved in a patent infringement suit against one of its biggest rivals, Rubrik, which it also filed in June this year.
We contacted Google with questions about the financial terms of the deal, the lawsuit, and any other specifics it could provide, such as how many people from the Actifio team are expected to join Google. A Google spokesperson declined to say anything further beyond the details in the short announcement. An Actifio spokesperson meanwhile did not respond to our request for comment.
In all, Actifio had raised around $461 million, with investors including Andreessen Horowitz, TCV, Tiger, 83 North, and more.
With the acquisition, Google is moving into what is one of the key investment areas for enterprises in recent years. The growth of increasingly sophisticated security breaches, coupled with stronger data protection regulation, has given a new priority to the task of holding and using business data more responsibly, and business continuity is a cornerstone of that.
Google describes the startup as as a “leader in backup and disaster recovery” providing virtual copies of data that can be managed and updated for storage, testing, and more. The fact that Actifio covers data in a number of environments — including SAP HANA, Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, PostgreSQL, and MySQL, virtual machines (VMs) in VMware, Hyper-V, physical servers, and of course Google Compute Engine — means that it also gives Google a strong play to work with companies in hybrid and multi-vendor environments rather than just all-Google shops.
“We know that customers have many options when it comes to cloud solutions, including backup and DR, and the acquisition of Actifio will help us to better serve enterprises as they deploy and manage business-critical workloads, including in hybrid scenarios,” writes Brad Calder, VP, engineering, in the blog post. :In addition, we are committed 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.”
“We’re excited to join Google Cloud and build on the success we’ve had as partners over the past four years,” said Ash Ashutosh, CEO at Actifio, in a statement. “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.”
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