In a significant new foray into the crowded backup and disaster recovery market, data protection vendor eFolder Inc. has acquired Replibit LLC, a BDR software maker headquartered in Orlando, Fla. The price tag and other terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Until today, Atlanta, Ga.-based eFolder’s five BDR solutions all combined its own cloud-based storage infrastructure with software from leading third-party vendors, including Replibit. The system now officially named eFolder Replibit will be the first BDR offering in the eFolder product family that it owns and operates entirely on its own.
Replibit’s solution, a hardware-neutral system with bare metal restore capabilities, local and remote virtualization, and support for a variety of both private and public cloud storage environments, debuted in 2014. eFolder released the Replibit edition of its BDR platform in May of last year.
“The product got rave reviews from our channel partners,” says Ted Hulsy (pictured), eFolder’s vice president of sales. Purchasing the vendor responsible for that product aligned well with eFolder’s long-term vision, he adds.
“We’re really positioning the company as a software-as-a-service company where we own the software IP from end point to cloud,” he says. “Replibit fits into that overall strategy quite well.” Joining forces was equally appealing to Replibit, he continues.
“They were looking for a way to take their product to another level with a larger organization, and it just became a good combination,” Hulsy says.
John Motazedi, CEO of Joplin, Mo.-based eFolder partner SNC Squared, feels the same way. “For us, Replibit and eFolder make a perfect combination,” he said in a press statement. “We fell in love with the Replibit software early on, since the reliability and automation features help us reduce our labor costs.”
Sweetening the deal for eFolder is the trove of patents that Replibit CEO Andy Bensinger,†a BDR veteran who played a key role in the design and development of backup software once sold by now defunct managed services vendor Zenith Infotech, brings with him.
“That’s a substantial part of the value we’re acquiring,” Hulsy says, adding that those patents are primarily a “defensive tool” offering protection from intellectual property suits. Bensinger has agreed to remain with eFolder and will be “deeply involved in product innovation,” according to Hulsy, in a new role that has yet to be determined.
Despite today’s announcement, empowering MSPs to choose from a range of BDR options remains an essential part of eFolder’s strategy, Hulsy emphasizes,†and offering a wholly-owned solution of its own doesn’t change the company’s commitment to its four remaining BDR alliance partners, Acronis International GmbH, Quest AppAssure, StorageCraft Technology Corp., and Veeam Software.
“These relationships are strategic, and we believe it’s a great strategy to provide choice to MSPs,” Hulsy says. “Naturally, Replibit will take kind of a primary position in our product portfolio.”
Replibit’s MSP partners will experience nothing but positive changes after today too, Halsy asserts, including more support and closer account management.
“We’ve gotten a lot of feedback from partners that they wanted to see Replibit as part of a bigger organization,” he says. “That’s, I think, an exciting dimension to the deal.”
Hulsy wouldn’t rule out future acquisitions in pursuit of eFolder’s aspirations to offer MSPs a suite of wholly-owned, cloud-based business continuity solutions.
“It’s really about helping them ensure and protect business productivity for their clients,” he says. “Everything that kind of fits into that scheme would be fair game.” Just don’t expect more news like today’s any time soon.
“Right now our plate is pretty full,” Hulsy says.
