A cybersecurity vendor that offers “all-in-one” services covering the many aspects of security IT has closed a large round of funding as cybersecurity grows in prominence in an increasingly complex and dangerous landscape.
During an interview, Serguei Beloussov, co-founder and CEO of Acronis, said the company plans to raise $250 million in equity for both organic growth and acquisitions to add more “proactive” technology to its portfolio. Over $2.5 billion is being invested in Acronis by CVC.
In its early years, Acronis was a spinoff from Parallels, the parent company of virtualization giant Parallels. In order to differentiate itself from competitors like Commvault, Veeam, and Barracuda (among others), Acronis has expanded into an all-in-one package of services that includes continuous data protection, patch management, anti-malware protection, etc.
By integrating with popular enterprise software packages and platforms, its business is now profitable, and it serves about 10,000 managed service providers and 500,000 businesses (SMBs and larger).
The money wasn’t needed, but we’ll invest it to grow faster and capitalize on our leadership, Beloussov said.
“New-wave revenues, based on its newer (not legacy) products such as Acronis Cyber Protect, grew 100% during the pandemic”
While the company remains private, it is also starting to consider its next steps, which could include a public listing or sale in the next 12-24 months.
Beloussov said private equity investors like Goldman Sachs [which led its previous round in 2019] and CVC definitely expect liquidity at some point.
Although the shift to remote working has been pushed along by the COVID-19 pandemic, many believe that the long-term effect will be a very different working environment with fewer people spending all of their time in their offices.
In particular, it has exposed some of the loopholes in company cybersecurity policies, including how IT manages networks and devices that run on them. This has been exploited by malicious hackers, who had been working long before the pandemic hit.
Due to all that, Acronis has seen a growing demand for its services, particularly its software sold via managed service providers.
“Last year, customers were encouraged to see that IT is a mission critical part of their business and that all businesses should realize this,” Beloussov said. “With the increase in security awareness, organizations have realized that managing by in-house resources can sometimes not be ideal and outsourcing to certified services can give you guaranteed service levels. With internal IT people, you may only be able to shout at them, but this is okay because they are used to it. Third parties, by contrast, operate with service-level agreements that are easier to enforce if something goes wrong.”
“Acronis’ talented management and R&D teams have invested significant resources developing an innovative cloud-native ‘MSP in a box’ solution, with integrated backup, disaster recovery, cybersecurity, remote management, and workflow tools. Serguei Beloussov and the Acronis team are very excited to partner with CVC Capital Partners to accelerate the company’s growth,” said Leif Lindbäck, senior managing director of CVC Capital Partners.
