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HPE boosts GreenLake capabilities with $374M Zerto acquisition

HPE anticipates that the addition of Zerto will significantly accelerate its transformation to become a leading data management and protection provider.
Antonio Neri (HPE)

Antonio Neri (HPE)

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has struck a deal worth US$374 million to acquire cloud data management and protection solutions vendor Zerto, a move the company claims will expand its GreenLake offering.  

Founded in 2009 and co-headquartered in Herzliya, Israel, and Boston, United States, Zerto’s approximately 500 employees serve more than 9,000 customers, including enterprises and 350 managed service providers (MSPs). 

Zerto’s software-only platform uses continuous data protection to converge disaster recovery, backup and data mobility and eliminate the risks and complexity of modernisation and cloud adoption. 

The company’s offering replicates and migrates data between VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V environments and natively to Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure. 

The addition of Zerto’s solutions to HPE’s product stack is not only expected to expand the HPE GreenLake offering, but also continue to deliver on HPE Storage’s shift to a cloud-native, software-defined data services business. 

“Data is now the most critical asset,” said Antonio Neri, HPE president and CEO. “With the explosive growth of data at the edge and across hybrid environments, organisations today face significant complexity in managing and protecting their data.  

“Zerto’s market-leading cloud data management and protection software expands HPE GreenLake cloud data services, allowing customers to protect their data and rapidly act on insights, from edge to cloud,” he added.  

HPE anticipates that the addition of Zerto will significantly accelerate its research and development (R&D) talent roadmap and its transformation to become a major data management and protection provider. 

“With data underpinning digital transformation, customers must manage, protect and mobilise their data,” said Tom Black, HPE Storage senior vice president and general manager. “Customers continue to face significant issues managing data complexity across hybrid and multi-cloud environments. 

“Zerto further positions HPE to help solve these customer challenges and become the leader in data management and protection through HPE GreenLake cloud services,” he added. 

At the same time, it is expected that Zerto will benefit from the deal by leveraging HPE’s global presence, distribution channel and installed base. 

“The HPE GreenLake edge-to-cloud strategy and strong leadership is a perfect match for Zerto,” said Ziv Kedem, Zerto CEO. “Coupling Zerto’s industry-leading cloud data management and protection software platform with HPE’s cloud data services and go-to-market reach will offer an unparalleled experience for our collective customers and partners.” 

Zerto’s management team will join HPE following the close of the transaction, which is expected to occur in the fourth quarter of HPE’s fiscal year 2021, subject to regulatory approvals and other closing conditions.  

After the transaction closes, Zerto will be organised under the HPE Storage business, reporting Black.  

The deal comes just weeks after HPE acquired Determined AI, a San Francisco-based start-up that provides a software stack to train AI models faster, at any scale, using its open source ML platform. 

Founded in 2017 by Neil Conway, Evan Sparks and Ameet Talwalkar, the start-up launched its open-source platform in 2020 and has quickly emerged as a leading player in the evolving ML software ecosystem.  

Now that HPE has bought the company for an undisclosed sum, the tech giant plans to combine Determined AI’s software solution with its own existing AI and high performance computing offerings.  

It is hoped the additional capabilities offered by Determined AI’s tech will help enable ML engineers to easily implement and train machine learning models to provide faster and more accurate insights from their data in almost every industry.   

“As we enter the ‘age of insight’, our customers recognise the need to add machine learning to deliver better and faster answers from their data,” said Justin Hotard, senior vice president and general manager, HPC and mission critical solutions (MCS), HPE.