StorageCraft Buys Exablox, Expands Data Management Portfolio

**Editor’s Note: Please click here for a recap of the biggest channel-impacting mergers in November-December 2016.**

StorageCraft, the data backup and disaster-recovery provider, has acquired Exablox, which produces flash and HDD based scale-out NAS storage offerings using an object storage architecture.

The acquisition provides current and future customers of the combined company with a “complete and competitive” family of enterprise products for analyzing, protecting and storing information, according to StorageCraft. Financial details regarding the acquisition are not being disclosed.

Marvin Blough, StorageCraft’s vice president of worldwide sales, tells Channel Partners the Exablox acquisition is “extremely significant” because partners can combine StorageCraft’s ShadowProtect franchise with scale-out storage capabilities from Exablox to provide data management from one vendor.

“StorageCraft partners have looked for a storage solution that could grow as they increased their data intake, but would not require massive forklift upgrades,” he said. “Those partners, including MSPs, who host customer data will find that they can grow their back end, but keep the same namespace on the front end. This will drive down their operation costs as they take on more customers through scalable storage. Providing primary and secondary storage services for either hosting or on-premises is a significant opportunity. Finally, the combination of StorageCraft and Exablox will also equip our existing and future channel partners with an enterprise-worthy solution to a tough problem and open up new segments for prospecting.”{ad}

Because StorageCraft and Exablox services complement each other, “an expanded footprint in the data-management arena can only help partners increase their business with existing clients,” Blough said.

Douglas Brockett, Exablox’s CEO, will remain with the company as president and report to Matt Medeiros, StorageCraft’s CEO. Exablox customers and partners will continue to be supported by their existing contacts.

“StorageCraft continues to build its portfolio to fuel hyper-growth,” Medeiros said. “By adding Exablox’s converged mid-market storage technology, we go from being a leader in business continuity to a leader in the data management market.”

“As a fast-growing scale-out storage company, our customers use OneBlox for both high-performance scale-out primary storage, as well as for …

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… secondary applications,” Brockett said. “Joining forces with StorageCraft allows us to deliver a more powerful solution with increased data protection and analytics capabilities for our customers.”

The acquisition provides an immediate opportunity for Exablox partners to have access to the StorageCraft data-protection suite, Blough said.

“Just as crucial, this acquisition not only brings new opportunities for Exablox partners, it also brings opportunities for new partners,” he said.{ad}

StorageCraft and Exablox already had a distribution agreement and an OEM agreement in place, which means the respective partners are relatively familiar with the other’s product line,” Blough said.

“We will reach out to the partner community and get their input on timing (in terms of partner program consolidation),” he said. “There will be no disruption whatsoever to any partner that is working with StorageCraft and/or Exablox.”

The acquisition of Exablox follows StorageCraft’s purchase of file-analytics company Gillware Data Services last September.