'Arctera is a growth business with a phenomenal set of assets. I don't say it's probably the world's oldest startup, but it is certainly one of the bigger ones. It's not quite a quote, unquote, traditional startup in essence, but we are starting our life with a clean sheet of paper to allow us to build the company that we believe will bring the best out of the three key assets we have as our as a starting point. We're really excited,' says Arctera CEO Lawrence Wong.
This month will be remembered for two major events in the data protection and data resilience industry.
First, Cohesity closed its acquisition of Veritas' enterprise data protection business, centered mainly around Veritas' NetBackup technology in a $3-billion deal that pushes Cohesity from the number six position in the industry to either number one or number two, depending on analysts' estimations.
Second, the remaining part of Veritas -- its Enterprise Vault data archiving, Infrascale data availability, and Backup Exec data protection businesses -- are now part of a brand-new company called Arctera.
[Related: Cohesity CEO Updates On Veritas Acquisition, IPO And Becoming A $2B Company]
Pleasanton, Calif.-based Arctera is led by CEO Lawrence Wong, a former Accenture managing director and, for the three years prior to the close of the Cohesity-Veritas merger, a senior vice president at Veritas.
Wong, who worked closely with former Veritas CEO Greg Hughes on driving that company's growth, is now looking forward to helping blaze Arctera's future path. He is aided in that quest by the fact that Arctera is already a profitable and growing company.
"We are a 'Rule of 40' company," Wong told CRN. "And I say that, by the way, not because I'm trying to brag or anything else. But that affords us the opportunity to actually invest in our products and our roadmap. That's what we intend to do. That's what we've been telling our customers, because the first thing that I hear when I go visit a customer right now is, 'What's going to happen to my product.'"
Wong also talked about the importance of combining data resilience with traditional data protection to help businesses thrive in the face of increased ransomware and other cyberattacks, and he outlined Arctera's business and its opportunities, and also discussed some plans for the coming new year.
There's a lot going on at this brand new yet massive data protection and data resilience company. For details, read the CRN's question and answer conversation with Wong, which has been lightly edited for clarity.