A while ago I wrote about the need for RMM and PSA vendors to consolidate, given what I described as the lack of innovation and technological advancement within those communities. Now that the M&A activity in the RMM space has largely settled, the remaining companies are investing heavily into R&D and their MSP partners. The same holds true for backup and storage vendors.
For a long time now the backup and storage vendor community has been saturated. There are simply too many technologies out there with too much overlap. Backup vendors trying to differentiate themselves in front of MSPs have had a hard time doing so for obvious reasons; there is not a lot of distinction amongst the backup vendor community. This stagnation is about to change.
With Barracuda Networks announcement that they will be acquiring backup vendor Intronis, the security appliance company made two things very clear: 1) Barracuda intends to enter the MSP channel, and 2) backup is an important part of Barracuda's channel strategy. Barracuda has a lot of resources and can take what Intronis started and improve upon it. This should cause the other backup vendors to reinvest in their products and partners and create even more innovation. This is good for MSPs.
Already, we've seen some interesting movement coming from the Mozy camp, as they have been increasingly integrated into the EMC side of the business and are preparing to launch products which go well beyond simple online backup.
There are many other backup vendors out there and how they react to this news will be interesting. In the long run, however, consolidation like this acquisition should only help the MSPs as it gives them better selection and more advanced technologies to take to market.
