Trend Micro Acquires Online File Sync Provider Humyo

Humyo.com is an online file storage service that automatically synchronizes files across multiple computers and a remote data store in order to make content available any time from any type of connected device.

In the latest cloud-services consolidation move, Internet content security software provider Trend Micro revealed June 11 that it is acquiring Humyo.com, a 3-year-old, privately held online storage and data synchronization company.

Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Humyo, pronounced hew-MY-oh, offers an online file storage service that automatically synchronizes a user's files across multiple computers and a remote data store in order to make content available any time from any type of connected device.

The company currently has about 600,000 users-mostly in Europe-storing more than 100 million files, co-founder Dan Conlon said. Its service is aimed strictly at consumers and small businesses and will be competing with services such as Dropbox and SugarSync.

"As a result of this deal, our customers will benefit from automatic data synchronization of files to a secure online storage center across all their computers and Internet-connected devices," Conlon said in a conference call. "Humyo.com enables superior organization of data and removes the manual effort of moving files from one PC to another, which is not only time-consuming but subject to potential data loss."

Files stored in Humyo.com can be shared with other users and published on Web pages, if so desired. The company houses its servers in a former Bank of England vault.

Humyo.com originally offered 30GB of free storage space to its customers. In 2008, the company reduced the amount of storage space offered free of charge to new users to 10GB.

"Our biggest competitor is that many of our potential customers do nothing at all today [in online backup and file sync]," Carol Carpenter, general manager of consumer and small business products at Trend Micro, told the conference call audience. "When you look at this market, it is a wide-open green space.

"Yes, there are some small competitors out there, but, frankly, their penetration rates are quite low. There are more and more digitally addicted people who are creating more files and documents [at] an ever-exponential pace, and when you combine the idea of content security around your device with data protection, we don't believe that there is any other competitor out there."

The transaction is expected to be completed within the next several weeks.