When I was at OpenText - there was a new acquisition email at least every quarter. I keep wondering how OpenText keeps acquiring so many companies because the value then was maybe $6 billion and now it's $11.5B (still shy of the $12bil they aimed for some years ago). Best part of working there was when I was out at a social event in SF and I overheard someone who was working for a company getting acquired by OpenText saying quite unpleasant things about OpenText and their strategy. I think she would've killed me if she knew I worked for them. I'm pretty sure OpenText was about to fire everyone and that's why she was so upset. (Strategy of the company AFAIK is to acquire lots of enterprise offerings, integrate the product with their current offering, fire everyone they can, and then sell the product with their current offering in hopes of getting bigger numbers to prop up stock price further)<p>I expect any consumer facing options to vaporize or be generally unsupported. OpenText is all about that enterprise/government software stuff. (I worked on a project where we were competing with IBM - to give some context)
So I worked for Carbonite back in 2016 for almost a year.<p>About 2 weeks after training I found myself wondering what they'd do in the face of everyone and their mother offering "free storage" which while completely different than secure backup sounds like the same thing to the layperson. Towards the end of my year there most of my calls (yeah I was customer support on the consumer level) were from seniors who didn't know how it worked but were told they needed to have it. It was an interesting if frustrating job.<p>You can look on Glass Door for various stories or check the papers in Maine for how they billed themselves as creating jobs even after they outsourced the consumer biz to Jamaica. That I saw coming but didn't acknowledge out of fear of losing my job. Oh well. They still canned me a week before Christmas.<p>This sale doesn't surprise me nor does the idea that OpenText will gut then sell it. Sour grapes and all they had to know this was where they'd end up sooner or later.<p>Whatevs. I used Crashplan now.
How the merger came together: <a href="https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1002638/000119312519299057/d818333dex99a1a.htm#toc818333_13" rel="nofollow">https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1002638/000119312519...</a><p>A much more detailed version, including interactions with other prospective acquirers: <a href="https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1340127/000119312519299069/d839795dsc14d9.htm" rel="nofollow">https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1340127/000119312519...</a> - find for "Background of the Offer"
So, should we assume that Carbonite's home plan will eventually be kicked to the curb like Code42 did with Crashplan?<p>Who's still left in the home backup solution ring? Besides iCloud/Google Drive/Dropbox, I count...Backblaze? And that's it?
Darn! I just got through converting my Mozy backup to Carbonite.<p>Carbonite failed to port any of my Mozy backup settings. They were backing up the useless "\Users" folder, not the important stuff which I had configured in Mozy.<p>Instead of notifying me from the "mozy.com" domain, they notified me from a carbonite.com email domain, which was not whitelisted and therefore never reached me.<p>Ostie de Tabarnak!
I interviewed at Carbonite back in 2014ish. I walked out of the interview absolutely perplexed what they do and where the leadership was. Before I even got the rejection email I started the process to give me the option to short stocks because I was sure CARB was going to go out of business in short order based on what I saw.<p>I didn't end up following through but the stock has been solid and increased a fair amount and here they are selling for a billion dollars. So... goes to show what I know.
What's interesting is that Carbonite and OpenText were in the same news release [1] just a year ago about consolidation in the cloud space.<p>[1] <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/14/consolidation-in-the-cloud-as-opentext-buys-hightail-and-carbonite-grabs-mozy-from-dell/" rel="nofollow">https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/14/consolidation-in-the-cloud...</a>
This thread could not have come at a more perfect time, my organization is looking to back up just under 1PB of content spread across about a dozen storage nodes.<p>We are looking for a reputable backup provider who can provide a solid product at the lowest price, striking a good balance between cost and features.<p>Our priorities are price, ability to encrypt the data, and setting up private network peering.<p>Any recommendations?<p>Our staff is comprised of smart system admins and developers who are well versed with Linux. No pretty UI's needed on our end.<p>Thanks in advance!
This leaves mostly Druva and Code42 as mainstream endpoint data protection options.<p>I guess with the likes of box onedrive and google drive the market may shift in the coming years...
I can highly recommend Arq with the cloud storage provider of your choice. I switched after Crashplan screwed with their plans and have been very happy.