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n a move to improve its U.S. market share, Veeam Software has agreed to be bought by private equity firm Insight Partners. The deal valued a $5 billion, is Insight’s second major acquisition of 2020. Veeam is cloud-focused data protection, backup, and disaster recovery software company.
Backup, and disaster recovery company.
Veeam was founded in 2006 and owned by Russians Andrei Baronov and Ratmir Timashev. The firm has grown to 365,000 customers worldwide and annual sales of more than $1 billion by capitalizing on the VMware-led server virtualization boom. As part of the take-over, the founders will leave the firm and Veeam will become a U.S. company based in New York. The company had been based in Baar, Switzerland.
Veeam’s products include backup solutions, cloud security offerings, and cloud data management. Veeam’s cloud data management portfolio consists of Veeam Backup for Amazon Web Services (AWS), Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365, Veeam Universal License (VUL), and Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure.
Private equity plans
The private equity company has a three-stage program to help the companies in which it invests grow, including the Startup stage of focused on companies looking for early growth in their markets, the ScaleUp stage for companies with strong businesses, and the Corporate stage for companies ready for IPOs or other exits, Mike Triplett, a managing director of Insight Partners and new Veeam board member told CRN.
ZDNet says Veeam is in the second “ScaleUp” stage as customers are now also utilizing hybrid cloud setups with AWS, Azure, IBM, and Google, the firm’s “Act II” is to capitalize on a growing need for cloud data management across these environments. Mr. Triplett claims Insight Partners can bring the right resources to bear to move Veeam from the “ScaleUp” stage to the “Corporate” stage.
Other Insight Partners investments
Insight Partners also owns other data protection companies — including Unitrends and Spanning. In addition to data protection, the VC has invested heavily in cybersecurity and MSP-friendly technology markets. Other key Insight Partners investments include:
- Kaseya (IT management)
- Darktrace (network security)
- OneTrust (privacy management)
- Recorded Future (threat intelligence)
- SentinelOne (endpoint security)
- Sysdig (container monitoring)
- Tenable (vulnerability scanning)
- Thycotic (privileged access management)
rb-
Expect to see lots of PE activity this year (decade?). Channele2e reports that private equity investors are sitting on a record $1.5 trillion in cash. This kind of war chest is no wonder private equity firms and hedge funds have a bad reputation. VC firms have a history of acquiring businesses, loading them up with debt, and cutting staff to boost profits. The most recent examples being Sears and Toys R Us. Channele2e points out that U.S. presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren is calling for new private equity restraints to combat “legalized looting.”
I have seen that Veeam has a Russian problem. Back in the day when I shared technical services, I tried to replace an HP LTO2 tape library (PDF) with a Veeam solution and the powers-that-were did not want Veeam – we spent a lot more money to maintain the old HP LTO2 technology.
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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.