Carbonite Buys EVault, Gains 200 Employees in Data Recovery

[Corrected, 1:40 pm. See below] One of the Boston area’s technology pillars just got stronger. Carbonite, a cloud backup and data protection company, says it is acquiring San Francisco-based EVault for $14 million in cash. The acquisition is expected to be complete in the first quarter of 2016.

More important, Carbonite (NASDAQ: [[ticker:CARB]]) is gaining 200-plus employees and plenty of business in disaster recovery and business continuity. With EVault, small and medium-size businesses will account for more than half of Carbonite’s bookings next year, according to the company. By my count, the deal will put Carbonite at over 800 employees total. [A previous version said EVault would account for over half of Carbonite’s SMB bookings, which was a misinterpretation of a company statement—Eds.]

The company is led by Mohamad Ali (pictured), a veteran of IBM and Hewlett-Packard who joined as CEO just over a year ago. Carbonite was founded in 2005 and went public in 2011. The company has been growing in part through acquisitions, including the purchase of e-mail archiving firm MailStore last December.

EVault is a division of data storage giant Seagate Technology (NASDAQ: [[ticker:STX]]), which got started in the late 1970s. EVault itself was founded in 1997 as a data-backup company.

Author: Gregory T. Huang

Greg is a veteran journalist who has covered a wide range of science, technology, and business. As former editor in chief, he overaw daily news, features, and events across Xconomy's national network. Before joining Xconomy, he was a features editor at New Scientist magazine, where he edited and wrote articles on physics, technology, and neuroscience. Previously he was senior writer at Technology Review, where he reported on emerging technologies, R&D, and advances in computing, robotics, and applied physics. His writing has also appeared in Wired, Nature, and The Atlantic Monthly’s website. He was named a New York Times professional fellow in 2003. Greg is the co-author of Guanxi (Simon & Schuster, 2006), about Microsoft in China and the global competition for talent and technology. Before becoming a journalist, he did research at MIT’s Artificial Intelligence Lab. He has published 20 papers in scientific journals and conferences and spoken on innovation at Adobe, Amazon, eBay, Google, HP, Microsoft, Yahoo, and other organizations. He has a Master’s and Ph.D. in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT, and a B.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.