Commvault, the data management vendor, is buying software defined storage (SDS) provider Hedvig in a move Commvault says will position it to drive improved and more innovative data management products for customers and channel partners.

The $225 million acquisition will give Commvault, which sells software to manage data across cloud and on-premises environments, more insights and capabilities in the marketplace, the company said.

Don Foster, vice president of storage solutions at Commvault, told Channel Futures that the acquisition of Hedvig takes his company beyond traditional backup and recovery to address the proliferation of enterprise data silos on prem and in the cloud.

Commvault’s Don Foster

“Commvault has always been committed to giving customers the portability, abstraction, protection and overall management of their data using the widest range of available platforms,” said Foster. “This acquisition allows our customers to think differently about storage and data management through an integrated product portfolio.”

The existing gap between data and storage must be met to help solve customer challenges and find better ways to solve their problems, said Foster.

“Bringing together Hedvig’s innovative software-defined storage technology with our proven data management offering helps accomplish this goal and set the new standard for the market for integrated solutions,” he said.

The operations of both businesses are expected to remain separate for now as the acquisition is completed in Commvault’s fiscal third quarter. An integration strategy is being created and will be announced in the future.

“After the deal is officially done, it will give our rich partner ecosystem access to these secondary storage use cases and access to the incredible vision that Commvault and Hedvig are executing toward,” said Foster.

Avinash Lakshman, CEO and founder of Hedvig, said being part of Commvault is a natural evolution for his company.

“In today’s industry there is a move toward standardizing infrastructure, and lines between primary and secondary are blurring,” said Lakshman. “Enterprises are looking for complete solutions, so the marriage of the two makes sense. Commvault has done significant innovations in the backup space and we will help Commvault expand into other areas with our product.”

Two IT analysts said the deal makes sense for both companies.

ESG’s Christophe Bertrand

“This should give Commvault’s channel partners new opportunities to upsell existing accounts with the Hedvig capabilities today and in time as the stack gets consolidated,” Christophe Bertrand of Enterprise Strategy Group, told Channel Futures.

It also gives partners the ability to develop offerings around active intelligent data management, which can expand horizons to greenfield situations and competitive replacements, he said.

“It’s early stages and partner education and training will be key, in combination with specific programs to support the broadened offering.”

Commvault is looking ahead at the next stage of the marketplace, which is to cross the data-management chasm by building a software-defined intelligent data management platform, said Bertrand.

“In time, Commvault customers will be able to more easily and actively manage data sets wherever they live based on their business purpose. I expect that this will give rise to improved and enhanced disaster recovery capabilities and also places Commvault in a good position to keep adding value-added data-centric services like …

… compliance, test dev, analytics for example.”

George Crump of Storage Swiss said the integration of Hedvig into the Commvault ecosystem enables the company to provide products for partners and customers that compete head to head with companies like Cohesity and Rubrik.

“While potentially a bit behind until integration is complete, Commvault is significantly ahead in platform coverage,” said Crump. “Until that integration work is complete, Commvault can still leverage Hedvig as its storage backend as well as sell the product in the use cases that Hedvig already addresses, including secondary storage and containers.”

For Commvault resellers, the acquisition provides them today with scale-out software-defined storage that is complimentary to existing data protection software, said Crump.

“Long-term, it provides them with a competitive alternative to Rubrik, Cohesity and Nutanix Mine,” he said. “Resellers may need to decide which converged data protection solution they plan on placing their bets on.”

Crump called the deal “an excellent move” for Commvault.

“It provides them with an interim storage solution for their entire product line, as well as another source of revenue for secondary storage and containers. They also gain access to a pretty deep development team with lots of experience in developing scale-out storage and applications,” Crump said.