Acquisition to address challenges of cloud data management, especially with accelerated data fragmentation.

Commvault has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire software-defined storage (SDS) innovator Hedvig for total consideration of US$225 million, which includes the purchase price and ongoing employee retention.

Gartner expects that by 2023, software-defined storage (SDS) instantiations of vendor storage OSs running in the cloud will become the dominant method of building multi-cloud storage infrastructures. 

This move to the cloud and multi-cloud environments, together with cloud-native applications, is driving competitive advantage for companies for all sizes; yet the acceleration of data fragmentation is negatively impacting business outcomes.

Rapid data growth, generated from a variety of sources stored both within on-premises environments and in the cloud, will continue to create significant governance, security and management challenges. 

“Multi-cloud data management is a hard problem for customers to solve, and that translates to value. Commvault’s acquisition of Hedvig is an astute strategic move that allows Commvault to differentiate and enhance its offerings – which broadens its addressable market.  We believe this increases the value Commvault can bring to these increasingly complex customer problems,” said Crawford Del Prete, president, IDC. 

“This acquisition demonstrates how Commvault is leading the way towards the intersection of storage and data management,” said Sanjay Mirchandani, Commvault CEO. “We believe joining Hedvig’s innovative software-defined storage capabilities with Commvault’s industry leading data protection reduces fragmentation and leapfrogs other solutions in the market.”

For years, Commvault has evolved its portfolio to focus on helping thousands of long-standing customers of all sizes globally protect, manage and use their data more effectively. This is demonstrated by the 600+PB of data managed by Commvault software in the cloud today. 

Hedvig drives significant operational efficiency, addresses the data sovereignty problems stemming from data governance laws, and enables hybrid-cloud and multi-cloud capabilities natively. Operational efficiency is achieved via complete protocol consolidation (block, file, and object storage) on a single platform.

 “Being completely software-based, the Hedvig platform can span multiple data centers across multiple physical geographies including disparate cloud environments,” according to Avinash Lakshman, Hedvig CEO. “This may be the most comprehensive solution ever unleashed into enterprise data centers and public cloud environments.” 

Hedvig was founded in 2012 by Avinash Lakshman, the inventor of Apache Cassandra and one of the inventors of Amazon Dynamo. The proposed acquisition is expected to close in Commvault’s fiscal third quarter, subject to certain closing conditions. The transaction is expected to be slightly dilutive to Commvault’s FY’20 non-GAAP EPS and accretive to FY’21 non-GAAP EPS.  

Commvault’s CEO added: “Hedvig’s technology is in its prime. It has been market-tested and proven. We believe that the convergence of storage, multi-cloud and cloud-native technologies, combined with our leadership in data management, will accelerate the movement towards modern applications built on containers and microservices. Commvault will set the bar for the unification of storage and data management for the future.”