Carbonite Acquires Double-Take Software: A Q&A with CEO Mohamad Ali

Today, Carbonite announced that it has acquired all the assets of Double-Take Software. We are very excited about this deal because it brings new products into our portfolio and grows both our employee and customer base worldwide.

We sat down with Carbonite CEO Mohamad Ali and asked him a few questions about the acquisition. A transcript of the conversation is below.

Mohamad, congratulations on this exciting announcement! Tell us a bit about the thinking behind the acquisition. Why did you make the deal, and why now?
Mohamad Ali: We made this deal to become the undisputed leader in the data protection market for small and midsized businesses. As you know, Carbonite has been steadily moving upmarket, building on our consumer-focused cloud backup legacy and adding cloud and hybrid-enabled server backup to meet the needs of small and midsize businesses. We accelerated that move this past year by expanding into Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) with the acquisition of EVault. Now that EVault is successfully integrated, we felt the timing was right to acquire Double-Take.

Who is Double-Take Software?
Ali: Double-Take is a leading provider of High Availability (HA), Disaster Recovery (DR) and Migration software solutions for physical, virtual, cloud and data services. Headquartered in Indianapolis, IN with offices around the globe, Double-Take has more than 6,000 customers ranging from small and midsize firms to Fortune 500 companies in more than 70 countries.

What exactly are you acquiring?
Ali: We are acquiring the Double-Take Software. We’re also happy to welcome to the Carbonite family 140 new employees across the U.S., Canada, France and the U.K.
To be specific, we’re bringing new products into our portfolio as a result of the deal:

• Double-Take High Availability – Replication of applications and data, in real-time, from physical, virtual and cloud servers
• Double-Take Disaster Recovery – Failover between a primary and secondary or cloud location in an emergency
• Double-Take Move – Scheduled move of systems from one location to another
• Double-Take Cloud Migration – Planned migration from MS Windows to Amazon, Azure or Google
• Double-Take SQL Migration – Migrating and upgrading Microsoft (SQL Server)

What does the technology do?
Ali: The Double-Take solution is continuous replication software that creates a second copy of the system in the cloud. It differs from backup because:

• It continuously sends changes – near real-time – keeping a very up-to-date replica at the second location.
• It can rapidly “fail over” to the dormant replica, booting up that system and switching over to it, as the primary system, within seconds.
• That secondary system becomes operational in the secondary location – no need to move the data back on-premise or fix the primary hardware.
• It is often deployed with a cloud as the secondary target in a DRaaS model.

What does this mean for Carbonite and Double-Take partners?
Ali: At present, the partner programs will remain separate, with an eye towards eventual reconciliation. Over time, it means more technology options to offer for the existing channel on both sides. Double-Take has a strong channel comprised of more than 500 partners including resellers and global systems integrators, which complements Carbonite’s 9,000+ strong partner community.

Many MSPs will choose to adopt the Double-Take solution into their portfolio, as this is a growing and high-demand market for them as well. They can augment it with professional services, assessments, and a variety of other add-on options that will serve their own markets, whether by geography or industry. Carbonite too will host the Double-Take solution in a DRaaS model, and, as with EVault, this co-opetition model is well accepted in the industry.

Anything else?
Ali: All of us here at Carbonite are really excited about welcoming new employees and partners to our team. I encourage everyone to read our press release.

If you have specific questions about the deal, feel free to reach out to AskDBTK@Carbonite.com.