Syncsort’s data protection business acquired by executive management, Bedford Venture Partners, and Windcrest Partners

Syncsort says that its data protection business has been acquired by members of its executive management team, industry veterans Robert Belau and Ken Barth of Bedford Venture Partners, and long-time Syncsort investor Windcrest Partners. This completes a planned separation announced earlier this year to enable greater focus and concentrated investment in each line of business.

The investor group has formed a new data protection company as part of the acquisition, and deployed additional capital to accelerate the development and growth of the business. Syncsort’s data protection business has over 1,200 customers and partners worldwide, and last week successfully launched its new cloud-based technology platform and category-defining ECX Enterprise Catalog software. After an initial transition period during which time the new company will continue to use the Syncsort trademark, it will unveil a new company name and branding.
“This is a fantastic acquisition by the management team, Bedford Venture Partners, and Windcrest Partners, as it will provide both Syncsort and the new data protection company with additional investment capital to accelerate growth,” said Lonne Jaffe, Syncsort’s CEO. “Building on our acquisition of Circle Computer Group last week and the success of our new Hadoop product line, we’re moving ahead to advance our Big Iron to Big Data growth strategy through both organic and inorganic investments.”

Flavio Santoni and his management team will continue to lead the new data protection company. “We are very excited about working with Flavio and the rest of his organisation to expand on their impressive accomplishments,” said Robert Belau, Managing Partner of Bedford Venture Partners. “We’ve been tremendously impressed with the whole team’s deep industry expertise and vision for the future of data protection. Last week’s release of ECX opens up a brand new market by providing the deep insight and analytics that storage customers need to increase efficiency and accelerate the adoption of snapshot technology. And this is just the beginning.”

Windcrest Partners, a long-time investor in Syncsort, is an investor in the new data protection business. Michael and James Gellert will serve on the board of directors of the new company. James Gellert commented, “After many years as investors in Syncsort, we have a very high regard for the company. We are excited to have the opportunity to back the management team of the data protection business as they begin their next stage as an independent company.”

In addition to the acquisition of the data protection business and Syncsort’s acquisition of the Circle Computer Group, Syncsort recently forged strategic technology and go-to-market partnerships with Cloudera, Tableau, Fujitsu, and Appfluent to further advance its vision of accessing and offloading legacy data platforms using powerful and less expensive next generation systems such as Apache Hadoop.