Commvault Acquires Hedvig to Further Advance Its Strategic Vision

Commvault (NASDAQ: CVLT), a recognized leader in software that manages data for global enterprise cloud and on-premises environments, has announced the acquisition of Hedvig, a software-defined storage (SDS) startup, for a total transaction value of $225 million, including the purchase price and the retention of existing employees.  

Gartner predicts that by 2023, software-defined storage instantiations of vendor storage operating systems (OS) running in cloud environments will become the primary way to build multi-cloud storage infrastructure.

Data migration to cloud and multi-cloud environments, as well as cloud-native applications, are creating competitive advantages for businesses of all sizes. However, increasing data fragmentation will have a negative impact on business outcomes. Multiple data sources stored in on-premises and cloud environments have accelerated data growth and will continue to pose significant challenges in governance, security, and management.

“Multi-cloud data management is a challenge that enterprise customers face, but it can also be transformed into value,” said Crawford Del Prete, president of IDC. “Commvault’s acquisition of Hedvig is a smart strategic move that allows Commvault to not only differentiate its products, but also enhance its product portfolio and expand its addressable market. We believe this acquisition will help Commvault deliver greater value in solving increasingly complex customer problems.”

“This acquisition demonstrates that Commvault is leading the industry in storage and data management,” said Sanjay Mirchandani, CEO of Commvault. “We believe the combination of Hedvig’s innovative software-defined storage capabilities and Commvault’s industry-leading data protection capabilities will reduce data fragmentation and outperform other solutions in the market.”

Over the years, Commvault has continued to develop its product portfolio, focusing on helping thousands of long-term customers of all sizes around the world protect, manage and use data more effectively. Currently, Commvault software manages more than 600 PB of data in the cloud.

Hedvig software can help enterprises significantly improve operational efficiency, address data sovereignty issues related to data governance laws, and realize hybrid cloud and multi-cloud capabilities locally. The operational efficiency is achieved through full protocol integration (including block, file and object storage) on a single platform. "The Hedvig platform is completely software-based and can span multiple data centers in different physical locations (including different cloud environments). This can be said to be the most comprehensive solution for enterprise data centers and public cloud environments." said Avinash Lakshman, CEO of Hedvig.

Hedvig was founded in 2012 by Avinash Lakshman, the inventor of Apache Cassandra and one of the inventors of Amazon Dynamo. Subject to closing conditions, the proposed acquisition is expected to close in Commvault's third fiscal quarter (December 2019). The transaction is expected to be slightly dilutive to Commvault's non-GAAP earnings per share in fiscal 2020 and accretive to non-GAAP earnings per share in fiscal 2021.

Sanjay Mirchandani, CEO of Commvault, added: “Hedvig’s industry-leading technology is proven in the market. We believe the convergence of storage, multi-cloud and cloud-native technologies, combined with our leadership in data management, will accelerate the move to modern applications based on containers and microservices. Commvault will set the standard for the future of storage and data management unification.”