
Carbonite To Be Acquired by OpenText for $1.4B - srhngpr
https://www.carbonite.com/news/article/2019/11/carbonite-to-be-acquired-by-opentext-for-23-dollars-per-share
======
bradlys
When I was at OpenText - there was a new acquisition email at least every
quarter. I keep wondering how OpenText keeps acquiring so many companies
because the value then was maybe $6 billion and now it's $11.5B (still shy of
the $12bil they aimed for some years ago). Best part of working there was when
I was out at a social event in SF and I overheard someone who was working for
a company getting acquired by OpenText saying quite unpleasant things about
OpenText and their strategy. I think she would've killed me if she knew I
worked for them. I'm pretty sure OpenText was about to fire everyone and
that's why she was so upset. (Strategy of the company AFAIK is to acquire lots
of enterprise offerings, integrate the product with their current offering,
fire everyone they can, and then sell the product with their current offering
in hopes of getting bigger numbers to prop up stock price further)

I expect any consumer facing options to vaporize or be generally unsupported.
OpenText is all about that enterprise/government software stuff. (I worked on
a project where we were competing with IBM - to give some context)

~~~
StillBored
Growth through acquisition is a pretty workable model. Especially when you cut
the resulting companies to the bone and basically put their product on life
support.

For products used by big enterprises its pretty amazing how long a product can
go without meaningful updates and still have companies paying for maintenance.
I've seen it a few times now, the engineering/testing is basically cut to one
developer who's job is basically to fix bugs and nothing else. For many
enterprises this is a pretty decent model. In many cases they don't need or
want new features, and the IT guys are very happy if they just get a point
release once or twice a year that is a 100% drop in replacement with some bugs
fixed.

For a large conglomerate that can sell new licenses as part of a bundle deal,
its a good plan to, the customer base grows at about the same rate as people
drop the products. The result is just a constant cash flow with basically no
overhead.

~~~
nikanj
I would pay _more_ for many products, if they offered this option.

I don't want whatever dark patterns and bonus features (
[https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20061101-03/?p=29...](https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20061101-03/?p=29153)
) marketing came up with this year. I want the basic functionality you had at
1.0, with all the bugfixes since.

~~~
rurp
Exactly my thoughts as well! The average update to a product I use regularly
is strongly negative. If I'm already using it that means that it mostly does
what I need it to. Constant updates are far more likely to change or degrade
existing functionality and/or add bloat that slows performance or clutters the
UI, than they are to improve something that already works.

------
changterhune
So I worked for Carbonite back in 2016 for almost a year.

About 2 weeks after training I found myself wondering what they'd do in the
face of everyone and their mother offering "free storage" which while
completely different than secure backup sounds like the same thing to the
layperson. Towards the end of my year there most of my calls (yeah I was
customer support on the consumer level) were from seniors who didn't know how
it worked but were told they needed to have it. It was an interesting if
frustrating job.

You can look on Glass Door for various stories or check the papers in Maine
for how they billed themselves as creating jobs even after they outsourced the
consumer biz to Jamaica. That I saw coming but didn't acknowledge out of fear
of losing my job. Oh well. They still canned me a week before Christmas.

This sale doesn't surprise me nor does the idea that OpenText will gut then
sell it. Sour grapes and all they had to know this was where they'd end up
sooner or later.

Whatevs. I used Crashplan now.

~~~
duxup
>I used Crashplan now.

Do you pay for their business plan?

They killed their consumer plans a while back and told me to go to Carbonite.
I was a bit bummed by that as I liked CrashPlan's client.

I went to Backblaze instead, not a fan of their backup client though.

~~~
krazyk8s
They may not be marketing towards consumers anymore, but they will happily
sell a $10/mo single PC license like before. I've been using them at home for
sometime.

~~~
secabeen
Yeah, that's okay, but I have a lot of small family devices that need backup,
but not a lot of backups. I don't want to pay $10/mo to backup my mom's
desktop and the 15GB of data in her user profile. Crashplan had a family plan
that handled that use case.

I ended up switching to iDrive, which has a 5TB limit, but which also allows
for unlimited clients within that 5TB.

------
troydavis
How the merger came together:
[https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1002638/000119312519...](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1002638/000119312519299057/d818333dex99a1a.htm#toc818333_13)

A much more detailed version, including interactions with other prospective
acquirers:
[https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1340127/000119312519...](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1340127/000119312519299069/d839795dsc14d9.htm)
\- find for "Background of the Offer"

~~~
srhngpr
This is neat! I had no idea they included the "Background of the Offer" in
their SEC filings. Thanks for sharing.

------
AdmiralAsshat
So, should we assume that Carbonite's home plan will eventually be kicked to
the curb like Code42 did with Crashplan?

Who's still left in the home backup solution ring? Besides iCloud/Google
Drive/Dropbox, I count...Backblaze? And that's it?

~~~
sombremesa
I just moved to a NAS with RAID. My data is in my own hands, Cloud Station
makes it work just like Dropbox, and I don't have to worry about paying a
subscription or a company going south.

~~~
abc_lisper
I would like more information on this please. What hardware do you use, and do
you have to pay for the software?

~~~
sombremesa
I use the Synology DS218+ along with two 4TB WD Red drives (which I got off
craigslist for a steep discount -- the seller even let me run diagnostics on
them for me and they were very lightly used).

I don't have to pay for the software. If you stick with the Synology OS it
comes with they have a package manager with things like various media servers,
Cloud Station, a download client, etc. You can also just shell into it and
install your own stuff.

You can get NAS disk stations with more capacity (more drive bays), but this
was all I needed.

~~~
eitland
You can even run docker on 218+. I'll maybe try to get one to replace my
current Synology at some point :-)

------
GnarfGnarf
Darn! I just got through converting my Mozy backup to Carbonite.

Carbonite failed to port any of my Mozy backup settings. They were backing up
the useless "\Users" folder, not the important stuff which I had configured in
Mozy.

Instead of notifying me from the "mozy.com" domain, they notified me from a
carbonite.com email domain, which was not whitelisted and therefore never
reached me.

Ostie de Tabarnak!

------
ones_and_zeros
I interviewed at Carbonite back in 2014ish. I walked out of the interview
absolutely perplexed what they do and where the leadership was. Before I even
got the rejection email I started the process to give me the option to short
stocks because I was sure CARB was going to go out of business in short order
based on what I saw.

I didn't end up following through but the stock has been solid and increased a
fair amount and here they are selling for a billion dollars. So... goes to
show what I know.

~~~
JohnJamesRambo
I suspect your initial gut feeling was correct but the market is staying
irrational longer than it should.

------
srhngpr
What's interesting is that Carbonite and OpenText were in the same news
release [1] just a year ago about consolidation in the cloud space.

[1] [https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/14/consolidation-in-the-
cloud...](https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/14/consolidation-in-the-cloud-as-
opentext-buys-hightail-and-carbonite-grabs-mozy-from-dell/)

------
vivid_truth
This thread could not have come at a more perfect time, my organization is
looking to back up just under 1PB of content spread across about a dozen
storage nodes.

We are looking for a reputable backup provider who can provide a solid product
at the lowest price, striking a good balance between cost and features.

Our priorities are price, ability to encrypt the data, and setting up private
network peering.

Any recommendations?

Our staff is comprised of smart system admins and developers who are well
versed with Linux. No pretty UI's needed on our end.

Thanks in advance!

~~~
fowl2
Veeam are great - they do have a lot of pretty GUIs though.

Support about every storage backend you can think of.

~~~
vivid_truth
Thanks for the suggestions :)

------
mc32
This leaves mostly Druva and Code42 as mainstream endpoint data protection
options.

I guess with the likes of box onedrive and google drive the market may shift
in the coming years...

~~~
bretpiatt
Cloud storage isn't the same as endpoint data protection. While it is creating
a second copy of data and has versioning it really is an online filesystem
with redundancy. Storage providers have not yet put together what I would
consider an auditable data protection capability where you can restore a full
folder, disk volume, or complete system to a point-in-time snapshot of the
data with specific retention periods (i.e. we need to keep 7-years for our ZZZ
records and 4-years for the QQQ records, etc.)

Context and disclosure: I run Jungle Disk [1] which is in the endpoint data
protection (and storage) market for small business. We see a lot of CrashPlan
(the Code42 product) and Backblaze [2]. The market has a ton of competitors
[3] overall. Further up market we see Barracuda, Druva and CommVault (along
with a whole other set of competition which integrates in with cloud
providers.

[1] - [https://www.jungledisk.com](https://www.jungledisk.com) [2] -
[https://www.backblaze.com](https://www.backblaze.com) [3] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_online_backup_se...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_online_backup_services)

~~~
rsync
"Storage providers have not yet put together what I would consider an
auditable data protection capability where you can restore a full folder, disk
volume, or complete system to a point-in-time snapshot of the data with
specific retention periods"

I hope it will be useful and interesting to point out that rsync.net, built on
the ZFS filesystem, allows customers to create _arbitrary snapshot schedules_
that are live and browseable.

Thousands of our customers do _exactly what you just described_ when they set
up day/week/month/quarter/year snapshots and then browse right in with any old
SFTP client[1] and retrieve arbitrary files and directories (or VM images,
whatever) as they existed on those dates.

These ZFS snapshots are immutable (read only) and immune to attacks like
ransomware or a rogue employee.

[1]
[https://www.rsync.net/products/sftp.html](https://www.rsync.net/products/sftp.html)

~~~
bretpiatt
For servers (or Linux workstations) this is a great strategy. For Windows 10 /
macOS endpoints you get the filesystem provided by the OS.

This also doesn't address data stored on cloud storage, full endpoint
unstructured user data backup is a messy one. While large companies use policy
management to force data off of laptops or non-protected cloud systems almost
every employee I interact with at normal small business has critical files on
their PC.

------
uptown
I can highly recommend Arq with the cloud storage provider of your choice. I
switched after Crashplan screwed with their plans and have been very happy.

~~~
subb
Why not Arq with their own cloud plan? What's the advantage of using their
tool with another cloud storage provider?

~~~
overcast
Something like G Suite Business, gives me my own email domain , all their
apps, unlimited data storage for $12 per user. Which if you have over 1TB
worth of data, definitely worth it. It will cost you more for less features
with Arq. Under 1 TB and no use for anything I said, Arq cloud definitely
where it's at.

~~~
uptown
Seems like the unlimited storage is only valid if you have more than 5
accounts. Otherwise, it's capped at 1tb. Is that your experience as-well, or
are you grandfathered in another plan?

~~~
overcast
It used to be that 5 user limit, but from what I can tell it is no longer.

[https://gsuite.google.com/pricing.html](https://gsuite.google.com/pricing.html)

------
dfgdghdf
Can someone explain what these two companies do?

~~~
eigenvalue
Carbonite does enterprise file backup. OpenText is a big software conglomerate
that tends to purchase slow-growing or declining (aka, "boring") enterprise
software companies and consolidates them, cutting costs and milking the
existing customer base for updates and support contracts. Basically they seem
to bet on inertia surrounding technology in big companies, which tend not to
change things that are working acceptably.

~~~
andrewflnr
So Oracle, but without even having written an interesting database?

~~~
polar
They had an interesting search engine once. I believe Yahoo! used to use it.

[https://www.opentext.com/about/history/1991-1994-the-pre-
web...](https://www.opentext.com/about/history/1991-1994-the-pre-web-years)

------
dirtymirror
They just bought Webroot earlier this year. Wonder what will become of that.

------
tootie
Isn't OpenText where second-rate enterprise software goes to die?

~~~
donarb
No, that’s CA.

~~~
fl0wenol
It's not an exclusive club.

