Online backup solutions specialist Carbonite announced on Oct. 18 that it acquired Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Zmanda, a provider of open-source and cloud backup solutions. The company’s products, which are aimed at small and midsize businesses (SMBs), include Amanda Enterprise, a network backup solution based on the Amanda open-source backup and recovery software platform. The acquisition, subject to customary closing conditions, is expected to be complete in the fourth quarter of 2012.
Carbonite, which focuses on backup and recovery for computers and mobile devices, snapped up Zmanda to broaden its reach into the SMB server and database segments. Zmanda Recovery Manager (ZRM) for MySQL and Zmanda Cloud Backup (ZCB) are designed to help businesses with limited IT budgets back up and recover critical data. ZCB is a Windows backup solution to backup both files and live applications to the storage cloud, while ZRM for MySQL is a backup solution designed specifically for MySQL databases. Zmanda customers will also have access to the Carbonite Business cloud backup solution for their computers.
“Zmanda is a great strategic fit for Carbonite. Carbonite has focused on backing up computers and mobile devices, while Zmanda has focused on backing up servers and databases. In the [SMB] market, most companies need both,” Carbonite chairman and CEO David Friend said in a statement. “Furthermore, IT resellers and MSPs [managed service providers] want to be able to offer their clients a complete cloud backup solution from one vendor that protects both computers and servers. We believe that adding in the Zmanda capabilities to Carbonite Business significantly expands our opportunity and will enable us to further capture the emerging and fast-growing SMB cloud backup market.”
Founded in 2005, Zmanda provides an enhanced version of the Amanda open-source backup project, and offers full commercial support for Amanda. The company provides centralized backup of file systems, virtual machines, applications and databases, while the product suite backs up Microsoft SQL Server, Exchange Server, SharePoint, Oracle, PostgreSQL and MySQL databases. Its solutions run on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and Solaris operating systems.
“With more than 20 years of ongoing development and significant research and development investment from Zmanda in the past seven years, Amanda is recognized as one of the most robust backup platforms built for today’s businesses,” Zmanda founder and CEO Chander Kant said in a statement. “As server backup migrates now to the cloud, Zmanda’s cloud backup offerings are well-positioned to ride this trend. We look forward to integrating the Zmanda solutions to complement Carbonite’s cloud backup as an unbeatable solution for the SMB market.”