Amazon Web Services purchases startup CloudEndure to bolster application and data migration, backup, and disaster recovery services for enterprise customers.
Amazon Web Services expanded its portfolio with the acquisition of a startup that specializes in application workload migration, backup and recovery.
AWS last week acquired CloudEndure, which had been an AWS Advanced Technology Partner. Published reports indicated the deal could be worth $200 million or more. An AWS spokesperson declined to provide details on the purchase price, the impetus or the public cloud giant's plans for the CloudEndure disaster recovery and migration technology. CloudEndure confirmed the deal on its website.
CloudEndure migrates data to public clouds and has partnerships with Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform, as well as AWS. The startup's key technology is continuous data replication that enables disaster recovery in the cloud.
One motivating factor for the AWS acquisition was the need to help customers migrate applications and data to the cloud, according to Marc Staimer, president of Dragon Slayer Consulting. Staimer said Amazon has found that a cumbersome migration process can be a major cloud inhibitor for enterprises.
Staimer said Amazon's CloudEndure disaster recovery services will help AWS better compete with Microsoft's Azure Backup and Azure Site Recovery services. While AWS has been a viable target for backup and DR applications, the acquisition gives AWS use of CloudEndure disaster-recovery-as-a-service and backup-as-a-service capabilities.
"In some ways, [the Amazon acquisition] is, 'We need to keep up with the Joneses,’" Staimer said. "But it's also to further Amazon's amoeba-like growth into being everywhere."
Hybrid cloud strategy
Amazon is moving more on-prem. This is now a major strategy for them.
Marc Staimerpresident, Dragon Slayer Consulting
With CloudEndure disaster recovery and migration, Amazon extends its hybrid cloud offerings to help customers use infrastructure that spans on-premises sites and public clouds. Another example of Amazon's hybrid cloud focus is the recently unveiled Outposts service that enables customers to run AWS servers in private data centers. AWS Outposts has drawn comparisons to Microsoft Azure Stack.
"Amazon is moving more on-prem. This is now a major strategy for them," Staimer said.
David Floyer, CTO and founder of IT research and analyst firm Wikibon in Marlborough, Mass., said tiny CloudEndure gives AWS technology it lacked.
"They're looking for ways of backing up into the cloud, ways of sharing things across the cloud," Floyer said of AWS. "There's a set of technologies they really don't have at the moment. CloudEndure has a lot of technology to minimize the amount of transfer of data. They have very good technology."
Other CloudEndure partners
It's unclear how the Amazon acquisition will affect CloudEndure's relationships with other cloud providers and vendors. The startup's site boasts partnerships with Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Microsoft Azure and VMware. Google, for instance, began offering a free CloudEndure-GCP VM Migration Service in 2017 to enable customers to nondisruptively import virtual machines or servers from on-premises sites and other clouds to GCP.
CloudEndure's site lists 45 customers, including major corporations, such as Toyota, Broadcom, Hewlett Packard, Home Depot and Schlumberger. The extent of their deployments of the CloudEndure disaster recovery and migration technology is unclear.
CloudEndure claims to have raised more than $18 million since its founding in 2012. Investors included Dell Technologies Capital, VMware, Infosys, Mitsui and Magma Venture Partners.
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