Backup and data management provider Commvault Systems Inc. today said that it has inked a deal to buy Hedvig Inc., a startup rival, for $225 million.

Santa Clara, California-based Hedvig previously raised over $50 million in funding from investors including Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. It sells a software platform that enables administrators to manage different kinds of data storage infrastructure through a centralized console.

Hedvig’s software works with on-premises hardware, cloud deployments and hybrid environments. It allows information technology teams to allocate storage capacity for applications centrally, as well as control the data that sits on that storage. Administrators can back up records, copy them from one application to another, apply encryption and perform related tasks.

The underpinning of Hedvig’s one-stop-shop feature set is its support for multiple storage types. The platform enables administrators to manage records kept in the form of blocks, files and objects, three formats that together cover practically the entire gamut of enterprise data. 

Bringing everything under a single interface reduces overhead for enterprises storage teams. As Hedvig Chief Executive Officer Avinash Lasksham explained in his most recent appearance on theCUBE (below), SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile live streaming studio, “all you gotta do is train your folks on one platform and just use it for different workloads by changing the policy or hardware.”

The acquisition of Hedvig will give Commvault a bigger presence in the $2.7 billion software-defined storage segment. In a research note, investment bank William Blair & Co. said the company’s leadership expects the deal to add up to 40% to its total addressable market.

The deal is the first for Commvault since Chief Executive Officer Sanjay Mirchandani came aboard in February. Mirchandani (pictured, right, with Lasksham) took over a company with declining revenues that is facing pressure to find new sources of growth. The Hedvig deal represents a move in the right direction: The software-defined storage segment in which the startup competes is expected to grow at a compound annual rate of 14.7% through 2023, according to William Blair.

Commvault will complete the acquisition by year’s end if everything goes smoothly. The company anticipates that the deal will be slightly dilutive to fiscal 2020 earnings per share and accretive the following year.

Photo: Commvault