Data Recovery Digest

Microsoft has completed their acquisition of data recovery company InMage. Based in the US and India, and founded in 2001, InMage are responsible for a product line called Scout. This uses continuous data protection for backup and replication. Microsoft has promised that they will bring the business continuity features to their Azure service. It’s not known how much the agreement cost Microsoft as the financial details of the deal were not publically disclosed.

Takeshi Numato, the Corporate Vice President of Cloud and Enterprise Marketing at Microsoft, announced the acquisition in a blog post. He wrote that their customers were telling them that business continuity – “the ability to backup, replicate and quickly recover data and applications in case of a system failure” – was an incredibly important feature. Of course, it’s clear to see why, since many aspects of the business would cease if the system failed.

The problem is that business continuity can often be expensive to implement, but it is often ranked by CIOs as a top priority. As such, Microsoft claims that they are “committed to solving this challenge for customers”.

"Enterprise customers are looking for the best, most valuable ways to take advantage of the cloud. Business continuity is often a great place to start, which is why we are very focused on delivering strong solutions in this area for our customers," Numato added.

InMage’s Scout, which in itself includes ScoutCloud, will be merged into Azure Site Recovery. Scout is a simple and easy to use disk-based data protection tool that collects data as it runs. This data is then backed up to a device or the cloud, ensuring recovery is hassle free and quick.

“This is a great move to meet important customer needs with the cloud as a target for disaster recovery. InMage has distinguished itself in a poorly understood and underserved market,” said Laura DuBois, Research Vice President for IDC.

Existing customers can continue to use InMage products and services as normal. Customers can migrate their data across the two services. Moving forward, customers will acquire Scout through Microsoft’s Azure Site Recovery. Microsoft say that they will continue to work with InMage service provider partners, along with all new partners, in order to give mutual customers the full range of solution options.

“Enterprise customers are looking for the best, most valuable ways to take advantage of the cloud. Business continuity is often a great place to start, which is why we are very focused on delivering strong solutions in this area for our customers. It is a key element of our continued effort to deliver a consistent hybrid platform and a broad range of services that connect customer, partner and Microsoft clouds,” finished Numato.

It is likely that Microsoft will continue to acquire and merge. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella recently announced his vision, citing acquisition and mergers as just a few of the components to keep Microsoft relevant in the marketplace and bringing about a new corporate culture. It’s likely that Microsoft will continue to target enterprise solutions in order to keep Microsoft the top dog in the business sphere.