Zix Acquires Cloud-Based Backup and Recovery Provider CloudAlly

Security technology provider, Zix, announced in a company press release that is has acquired cloud-based data backup and recovery company CloudAlly.

The acquisition gives the security technology provider a position in the cloud backup and recovery market while expanding Zix’s product suite into Microsoft Office 365 backup and offers customers complementary and synergistic go-to-market motions and end markets with no overlap in the companies MSP partner bases.

Baker Botts and Gornitzky & Co. acted as legal advisors and Clairfield International acted as financial advisors to Zix while Gross Kleinhendler Hodak acted as legal advisor to CloudAlly.

David Wagner, Chief Executive Officer at Zix explained what the combination of forces means for the company by saying: Our acquisition of CloudAlly greatly enhances the Zix suite of solutions and will provide our partners and customers with another robust tool to drive further cloud adoption in their digital transformation journeys. With CloudAlly, we can now directly address the growing demand we’ve seen from partners, customers and prospects alike for an enterprise-grade cloud backup offering with a best-in-class solution. In fact, through a recent survey of our MSP partner base, we found that at least 45% confirmed they would purchase a backup solution from Zix if it became available.”

The data storage, back up, and recovery market has witnessed a noticeable increase due to companies going remote and social gatherings happening online and the need to store items on the cloud and virtual storage units increases. MarketsandMarkets highlighted in its September 2020 Cloud Storage Report that the global cloud storage market size is projected to grow from $50.1bn in 2020 to $137.3bn by 2025.

The security technology provider is not the only one making moves in the data storage, back up, recovery, and protection market as businesses, and investors, are being quicker to notice the power of data solutions resulting in more acquisitions and partnerships.

Unifiedpost and Google announced towards the end of October 2020 that it will be collaborating on deploying an initiative called Procurement DocAI with the aim to process 350 million invoices and procure-to-pay docs per year in 15 countries across Europe. An example of an initiative that will likely need data stored, backed up, recovered, and protected.

Israel-based CloudAlly was founded in 2011 and has since grown to become an enterprise-grade, software-as-a-service (SaaS) cloud backup and recovery solution provider that claims to protect 5,000 customers and 500,000 users from data loss with 3.5m backups completed each week.

Avinoam Katz, Chief Executive Officer at CloudAlly explained why the businesses capabilities will be a complementary and valuable addition to Zix by saying: “A comprehensive data protection plan is more important than ever as companies around the world are focusing on cybersecurity for their remote workforce. We’re extremely excited to join forces with Zix at this time and feel that our industry leading cloud backup service will be a complementary and valuable addition to their recently announced Secure Cloud Platform, an integrated suite of productivity, security and compliance services. This suite of services will give our rapidly growing combined customer and partner base around the world the tools they need to protect their critical cloud assets across an evolving distributed workforce.”

The cloud-based data backup and recovery provider has won a number of awards for its ISO 27001 certified and GDPR/HIPAA compliant solutions for platforms that include Microsoft Office 365, Google Workspace, SharePoint, OneDrive, Salesforce, Box, and Dropbox.

The security technology provider claims to represent a number of national institutions in healthcare, finance, and government with its email encryption and data loss prevention, advanced threat protection, unified information archiving, and bring your own device (BYOD) mobile security.

Wagner went on to explain how these two businesses can leverage each others strenghts by saying: “Cloud backup being our number one product adjacency, coupled with our proven success attaching additional products to our customer base, gives us a high level of confidence that we can leverage CloudAlly to become a greater business than just the sum of its parts. With CloudAlly, we can greatly enhance our Secure Cloud platform and also mitigate concerns around ransomware which has become a large industry focus.”

The security technology provider gave further insight on the details of the acquisition and what it means for the companies outlook on its third quarter on a management call with the highlights being reported in its Third Quarter 2020 Financial Results press release.