AppAssure Acqusition Pushes Dell Deeper in Storage, Backup

Written by Dave Courbanou 1
February 27, 2012

Dell continually is looking to expand its portfolio of solutions, and this time, such expansion comes courtesy of an acquisition. AppAssure, the all-encompassing data backup company, is becoming part of the Dell family, boosting Dell’s storage offerings and helping the company reach deeper into the enterprise. Here are the fast facts …

First, a refresher: AppAssure provides cloud, virtual machine (VM) and physical backup solutions for not just data, but also mission-critical applications themselves. AppAssure ensures a unified backup solution, which also allows for cross-platform server recovery such as a virtual server to physical or vice versa. AppAssure also can back up multiple VMs from different environments, including Hyper-V, vSphere and XenDesktop.

But Dell’s interest in AppAssure isn’t just for its “near-zero” complete data and application restore time — it’s also about AppAssure’s considerable growth. According to the release …

AppAssure recently reported 194 percent revenue growth year-over-year in 20112 and 19 consecutive quarters of growth and Inc. Magazine has ranked AppAssure as the nation’s fastest-growing backup and replication software company.

Despite all the positive numbers, Dell declined to disclose the financial information of the acquisition. But at any rate, with AppAssure’s technology under its belt, Dell is poised to offer complete company infrastructure backup storage solutions for burgeoning companies with expanding data centers. Look out, HP: Dell’s moves with AppAssure can help the company dig considerably deeper into the enterprise space, allowing partners to offer end-to-end storage solutions. Dell sees AppAssure as a perfect compliment to its existing storage technology, specifically the solutions under the Fluid Storage moniker. Dell plans to continue investing in AppAssure following the acquisition, keeping the nearly 230 existing employees with it.

Meanwhile, how could Dell’s AppAssure acquisition affect the MSP space? Be sure to check out Joe Panettieri’s deep dive on MSPmentor. Meanwhile, the acquisition watch never stops. Be sure to check other recent moves by Dell, including its healthcare vertical focus and the continuing assault on HP for the data center.