Actifio

Actifio

Company type	Private
Industry	Information technology
Founded	July 2009 (2009-07)
Founder	Ash Ashutosh
Defunct	December 14, 2020 (2020-12-14)
Fate	Acquired by Google
Headquarters	Waltham , United States
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	Ash Ashutosh (Founder, former CEO)
Products	Copy data virtualization technology, Resiliency Director
Number of employees	120 (2012)

Actifio was a privately owned information technology company headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts. The firm focused on copy data virtualization technology designed to optimize IT infrastructure by eliminating redundant data copies. On December 3, 2020, Google revealed plans to acquire Actifio for an undisclosed amount, finalizing the transaction on December 14, 2020.

Products

Actifio developed solutions intended to reduce excessive duplication of application and software data. Their technology ensured data fidelity while allowing swift accessibility throughout the entire data lifecycle. By virtualizing storage and data management processes, Actifio replaced fragmented data protection systems with a unified platform purpose-built for that function. This method involved generating a "golden master" version of production data, enabling rapid manipulation and restoration. The system was reported to lower storage expenses and enhance operational efficiency compared to conventional data management approaches.

History

Actifio was established in July 2009 by Ash Ashutosh in Waltham, Massachusetts, beginning with a team of four employees. The company introduced its initial product in the autumn of 2011.

In 2012, Gartner included Actifio in its Cool Vendor report, recognizing its cloud-centric data management solutions that removed the necessity for secondary data centers. That year, the company experienced approximately 700% growth over the previous year, with five straight quarters exhibiting 500% year-over-year increases. During Q4 2012 alone, Actifio secured 62 new customers with an average deal size of $210,000, positioning it as the fastest expanding storage startup. The workforce expanded from 50 employees in December 2011 to 120 by May 2012, with roughly a quarter of revenue originating from European markets.

Funding

On July 21, 2010, Actifio obtained $8 million in Series A financing led by North Bridge Venture Partners and Greylock Partners. Jamie Goldstein from North Bridge highlighted the company's strong market potential and skilled leadership as critical factors for success.

By September 30, 2010, the company completed a $16 million Series B round led by Advanced Technology Ventures (ATV), bringing total venture funding to $24 million.

In 2011, Actifio raised $33 million in Series C funding spearheaded by Andreessen Horowitz—known for backing Facebook and Twitter—raising total capital to $57 million. Partner Peter Levine expressed assurance that Actifio would capture a significant portion of the backup and storage market.

During its early 2013 Series D round amounting to $50 million, Actifio was valued at $500 million, increasing total venture capital raised to $108 million.

On March 23, 2014, Actifio announced a $100 million Series E funding round involving Tiger Global Management, Andreessen Horowitz, Greylock Partners, North Bridge Venture Partners, Advanced Technology Ventures, and Technology Crossover Ventures. This investment elevated the company's valuation to $1.1 billion and brought total funds raised to $207.5 million. Founder Ashutosh remarked that despite high demand, some funding offers were declined.

In August 2018, Actifio secured an additional $100 million in financing.

Clients

Actifio's portfolio of clients featured prominent entities such as Time Warner Cable, Boston University Medical Campus, Navisite, the City of South Portland, Unilever, IBM, and Netflix. By October 2012, the company supported roughly 180 customers, with typical deal values near $250,000. By March 2013, Actifio had grown its clientele to over 300 organizations spanning 31 countries, securing average contracts over three years worth $349,000. At that point, Actifio was responsible for managing data exceeding 1 exabyte, which included 14 petabytes of active application data alongside 55 petabytes of physical storage capacity. By July 2014, the global customer count had reached about 400, including large multinational corporations and cloud service providers.

IBM OEM

On February 5, 2019, Actifio entered into an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) agreement with IBM. This deal allowed IBM to offer an IBM-branded variant of Actifio’s software under the designation IBM InfoSphere Virtual Data Pipeline (VDP). The collaboration was designed to expedite application modernization initiatives within multicloud and artificial intelligence settings.

Acquisition

Google announced on December 3, 2020, its plan to acquire Actifio for an undisclosed sum; the transaction was finalized on December 14, 2020. Subsequent to the acquisition, Actifio informed Massachusetts state officials of workforce reductions affecting 54 employees locally; layoffs in other locations were not publicly detailed.

Copy data

Copy data encompasses multiple duplicates of identical files, including volumes, backups, development/testing environments, and disaster recovery copies. Research by IDC revealed that approximately 75% of storage capacity is occupied by copy data, with businesses spending an estimated $44 billion managing it in 2013. As one of the early pioneers in the copy data management (CDM) sector, Actifio works alongside IDC to study this issue.

In July 2014, Actifio introduced Resiliency Director, a tool automating disaster recovery processes. Disaster recovery provider Sungard Availability Services utilized this solution to restore hundreds of virtual machines in less than 20 minutes successfully.

Ash Ashutosh

Ash Ashutosh founded Actifio after serving as chief technologist at HP StorageWorks following HP’s acquisition of his startup AppIQ in 2005. He holds degrees in electrical engineering and computer science from Penn State University. His professional background includes positions at LSI, Intergraph, and StorageNetworks, as well as founding Serano Systems—which he sold to Vitesse Semiconductor. After AppIQ was acquired by HP, Ashutosh joined Greylock Partners as a venture investor before departing in 2009 to become president and CEO of Actifio.

By 2013, Ashutosh held the role of entrepreneur-in-residence at Harvard Business School and lectured at MIT. That same year, Ernst & Young honored him with the "EY Entrepreneur of the Year" award for New England. Originally from India, Ashutosh’s leadership has been instrumental in establishing Actifio’s presence within the $44 billion copy data management market.