Nasuni Buys Storage Made Easy, Looks To Expand Remote File Capabilities

‘We can now offer two new services because of the acquisition. The first is access to data from anywhere to let a distributed workforce access data without a VPN. The second is compliance and search. In the NAS world, you can’t do that between all those data silos,’ says David Grant, Nasuni’s new president.

Nasuni, the cloud file data services technology developer, is planning to add remote work and compliance capabilities via the acquisition of Storage Made Easy.

Nasuni Tuesday unveiled its acquisition of Storage Made Easy, including the entire company and its product set, for an undisclosed price.

For Nasuni, the acquisition brings the ability to expose files stored by Nasuni’s cloud technology to remote workers, said David Grant, who this month was named president of the Boston-based company.

[Related: 2022 Storage 100: Who’s Got Your Backup?]

Storage Made Easy lets Nasuni, which last month acquired the cloud-native data migration technology of DBM Cloud Systems and which three months ago added ransomware protection for file data stored on its cloud-based system, expand the services it offers its channel partners, Grant (pictured above) told CRN.

“We can now offer two new services because of the acquisition,” he said. “The first is access to data from anywhere to let a distributed workforce access data without a VPN. The second is compliance and search. In the NAS world, you can’t do that between all those data silos.”

Nasuni and Storage Made Easy are no strangers to each other, Grant said. The two have been partnering with each other for about three years, and already have about a dozen joint customers, he said.

“Our experience with them has been good,” he said. “And they have a great technology roadmap. We will be selling their existing products for now, and expect to offer new branded services in the next few months. They offer a cloud service like we do, so the turnaround will be pretty quick. The new branded services will be closer to a re-branding of their existing services, but will maybe use our pricing model.”

Nasuni is nearly 100-percent channel focused, while about 80 percent of Storage Made Easy’s revenue come from channel partners, he said.

Nasuni decided it was better to acquire Storage Made Easy than to build the remote access and compliance technologies on its own, Grant said.

“Speed to market is important,” he said. “We’ve been in this market for eight years. There have been pockets of adoption for the cloud. But now we’re hitting ‘hockey stick’ growth. Our ransomware service was home-grown, but many of our new services going forward will be inorganic.”

The acquisition of DBM and Storage Made Easy comes after Nasuni in March unveiled a new round of equity investment of $60 million. Nasuni, which now has about $100 million in cash, saw over 30 percent annual revenue growth, Grant said.

“We want to continue to be a standalone company,” he said. “We have the momentum. We’re not yet cash-flow positive. But we believe that will be the last funding round. We’re still in growth mode. We think the market opportunity is there.”