Carbonite Purchases EVault from Seagate for $14 million

Carbonite (CARB) has acquired EVault, the business continuity and disaster recovery division of Seagate Technology (STX) for $14 million in cash, the company announced on Wednesday.

The acquisition will allow Carbonite to add several of EVault’s solutions to its own portfolio as the company looks to expand its lineup of data protection and recovery solutions for small and medium business customers, according to the announcement. The purchase is also expected to boost Carbonite’s status in the lucrative SMB market, which the company estimates to be worth $13 billion in the U.S. and more than $40 billion worldwide.

“With this acquisition, Carbonite is taking a big step forward in meeting the data protection and business continuity needs of the entire SMB market from home offices to medium-sized businesses,” said Mohamad Ali, president and CEO of Carbonite, in a statement. “EVault’s proven technology… enables us to round out our portfolio and immediately provide the features and functionality larger businesses require to support their complex environments.”

Straight from the press release, Carbonite said it plans to add the following EVault products to its portfolio:

• EVault Cloud Backup and Recovery – a software-only solution for server backup

• EVault Backup and Recovery Appliance – provides all the benefits of EVault Cloud Backup and Recovery with an appliance form factor for local backup and restore

• EVault Cloud Resiliency Services – A disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) solution providing failover in the cloud

Seagate purchased EVault in December 2006 for $185 million — When compared with its $14 million sale price, Seagate lost an estimated $171 million in the trade-off, according to The Register. The company seems to have struggled to find a niche for the EVault brand since taking ownership nearly a decade ago, which could ultimately have played into the decision to sell it for less than a tenth of the original purchase price.

Carbonite expects to complete the acquisition of EVault’s North American assets by January, with the acquisition of its European Union assets scheduled to close during Q1 2016.

Carbonite recently appointed Jessica Couto as the company’s new vice president of Channel Sales and Marketing, replacing former channel chief David Maffei, who stepped down from the role in July to become chief revenue officer at Akumina.