- New entity will engage with 3,000 channel partners
- Deal opens up AI-powered data security and management market
- Companies will target a total addressable market of more than $30 billion
- Projected annual revenues of $1.6 billion and ARR of $1.3 billion
Data security and management provider Cohesity intends to acquire Veritas’ enterprise data protection, marking a significant development in the fragmented data security industry likely to result in more robust and comprehensive offerings. The combined valuation of the businesses will be $7 billion.
This is technology M&A deal number 35 that MSSP Alert and sister site ChannelE2E have covered so far in 2023. See more than 2,000 technology M&A deals for 2023, 2022, 2021, and 2020 listed here.
Sanjay Poonen, Cohesity’s chief executive, will helm the new company and Greg Hughes, Veritas' chief executive, will serve as a board member and strategic advisor to Poonen beginning at the close of the transaction.
The remaining assets of Veritas' businesses will form a separate company called DataCo, which will comprise Veritas' InfoScale, Data Compliance and Backup Exec businesses. It will function autonomously and be led by Lawrence Wong, currently Veritas’ senior vice president of strategy and products, who will assume the chief executive post.
Both Cohesity and Veritas maintain partner ecosystems and when combined will sport a lineup of some 3,000 cloud service providers, security players, VARs, system integrators, and hardware OEMs.
Cohesity's 4,000 customers include six of the Fortune 10 companies, while Veritas’ corporate customers comprise 96% of the Fortune 100 and 80% of the Global 500.
Poonen said the combined companies “will lead the next era of AI-powered data security and management by bringing together the best of both product portfolios, Cohesity’s scale-out architecture ideally suited for modern workloads and strong Generative AI and security capabilities, and Veritas' broad workload support and significant global footprint, particularly in the Global 500 and large public sector agencies.”
Hughes said that Veritas and Cohesity share a “common vision of empowering businesses to protect their critical data assets in the face of evolving cyber threats and complex hybrid cloud environments.”
The San Jose, California-based Cohesity and the Santa Clara, California-based Veritas said they will continue to invest in and support all Cohesity products and services, along with Veritas’ NetBackup, NetBackup appliances, and Alta data protection offerings.
Delivering an integrated solution of the two companies' best technologies is central to its overall strategy, as is augmenting long term growth with incremental product and geographic expansion, officials said.
The combined company will be backed by current investors Softbank Vision Fund, Sequoia Capital, Wing Venture Capital, Premji Invest, and others. Haveli Investments and Madrona will become new investors. Existing Veritas shareholders, including majority owner Carlyle, will become Cohesity shareholders upon the closing of the transaction.
