StorageCraft Adds Intelligence to Backup with Gillware Buy
StorageCraft Technology Corp. is bolstering its business continuity platform with technology from a company in the Upper Midwest that prioritizes which data gets backed up.
"This is all about being smarter -- don't just store everything over and over again," said StorageCraft CTO Scott Barnes of the company's acquisition this week of Gillware Online Backup. With the deal, StorageCraft gets Gillware's file backup solution, its data analytics tool for determining what data to back up, a rules engine for prioritizing backups and about 15 employees.
The company's founder and president, Wes Gill, will continue operations in Madison, Wis., as Gillware Data Recovery, which specializes in recovering data from mechanically failed storage devices and counts Western Digital and Dell among its major clients. While terms of the deal were not disclosed, StorageCraft CEO Matt Medeiros said in a statement that funding came entirely from recent growth in operating cash flow rather than debt.
Barnes said the Gillware file backup technology may be worked into hybrid backup and recovery solutions along with StorageCraft's flagship image-based solutions, but that the deal was mostly about the analytics and the rules engine.
"Analytics is something that we didn't have. For us, image was everything," Barnes said. "Our new tagline is, 'Not all data is equal and therefore you shouldn't treat it as equal.'"
Current trends like BYOD make prioritizing backup more important than it used to be, said David McConkie, senior director of product management at StorageCraft. "You don't want to give the QuickBooks database file the same level of backup as the picture of the neighbor's dog," he said.
Gillware's tools and rules engine will help StorageCraft focus on three things -- speed of recovery, mitigating liability to a business and better understanding of the total cost of ownership, McConkie said.
Gillware, which has a partner network of its own, had been a StorageCraft provider and reseller. StorageCraft partners have access to Gillware's products through the Gillware portal immediately, and the products will be part of StorageCraft's partner portal in November.
Posted by Scott Bekker on September 21, 2016