San Antonio—Data backup company Jungle Disk has acquired an online data backup service for users of QuickBooks Online—a move toward offering backup support for more software-as-a-service (Saas) products.
Jungle Disk already sells small businesses an encrypted file backup service for laptops, desktops, servers—any type of device where Jungle Disk’s product can mount and access a file system, says CEO Bret Piatt. It also covers backup support for a few online products, such as Google Drive, Dropbox, and e-mail applications.
Jungle Disk had considered building its own SaaS-focused security product for QuickBooks Online users, Piatt says. But then it found an existing one, SafetyNet, developed by Alberta, Canada-based Jobber, which provides online scheduling and invoicing tools for business services. Jobber wasn’t interested in owning the product any longer because SafetyNet fell outside of its business scope, Piatt says. So Jungle Disk snapped it up. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.
SafetyNet gives Jungle Disk an already-operating service focused on a SaaS cloud product that has different backup requirements than the computers or servers its traditional service protects, Piatt says.
Jungle Disk may seek to adapt SafetyNet for use in other SaaS programs, in particular customer relationship management products such as Act or Salesforce, Piatt says.
“I would expect to see us take the technology we have acquired out of SafetyNet, and look at how do we can extend that beyond just QuickBooks to other CRM or other common applications where small businesses are going to start storing their critical records,” he says.
Jungle Disk became an independent company in January 2016 after raising $11 million to spin out of Rackspace, the San Antonio-based cloud computing giant. (The startup raised an additional undisclosed amount of funding earlier this year.) Jungle Disk may seek to make more acquisitions, and could raise additional funds if the company does, despite being profitable, Piatt says.
