Cloud management and migration specialist Metalogix announced this morning that it is buying MetaVis for its cloud collaboration service management platform. The price was not disclosed.

Metalogix CEO Steve Murphy told CMSWire the deal is designed to secure the cloud management and migration space in advance of the SharePoint 2016 release.



One-Stop Cloud Shop

However, this deal is about more than SharePoint 2016 or any other SharePoint edition for that matter. It’s about offering enterprises a one-stop shop for the management, protection, migration and governance of any enterprise content in the cloud.

"I've been watching MetaVis for years. In the cloud, we were looking for a fully integrated, light, nimble, single-instance, single install, multitask, multitenant cloud infrastructure. MetaVis offers exactly that," Murphy said.

In fact, he noted, Metalogix has spent considerable time building a business around moving, managing and securing, cloud environments. This is just the latest of that development.

The choice of MetaVis is both shrewd and a logical. Both companies have complimentary offerings that Murphy noted will be slowly blended, depending on market conditions.

"We'll be letting MetaVis operate on its own. We will invest in its roadmap, let it operate, see where that goes and watch what happens. Over time, we'll see the emergence of a blended roadmap built around the market, but there's no time frame," he continued.

The bottom line: MetVis will continue to exist and both its products and customers will continue to be supported.

Beyond the technology aspects of the deal, Murphy said pluses of the deal include combined leadership teams, distribution channels and what he described as the industry's highest rated live 24/7 support.

Migrating To SharePoint

Make no mistake about it, support is going to be one of the real differentiators once SharePoint and SharePoint content migration becomes an issue. And it will, once SharePoint 2016 is released.

Murphy acknowledged that the timing of the deal was no coincidence.

There is a huge migration season coming and we have now solidified our leadership [in the migration space]. Between the two firms everyone has been working on how to accelerate the speed of migration, to really turbo-charge it, so now we can combine our efforts and really increase the speed of migration both for cloud, Office 365 and other cloud targets.”

However, he said the conversation now going on in enterprises around the upcoming release goes beyond SharePoint 2016. It includes other information management strategies.

Unlike the conversations previous versions, which focused on SharePoint itself, enterprises are looking at the role of SharePoint in the wider information management infrastructure. This is particularly true now that there are so many choices of cloud infrastructure.

"Enterprise [CIOs] are asking themselves: What am I going to put in Office 365, what am I going to put in another tiered storage platform in the cloud like OneDrive, or Amazon? What am I going to going to keep on premise?" he said.

With MetaVis, Metalogix is in a position to offer more answers, no matter what path enterprises decide to take — whether it is on-premises, cloud or a hybrid solution.

Adding a new SharePoint edition to the market will force many enterprises to think about their own deployments and where they should be going.

Murphy said there are some geographic differences among clients: the principal interest in Asia is in migrating from SharePoint 2007 to 2010, in Europe, it's migrating from 2010 to 2013, and in the US, it’s a 50/50 mixture of the two.

Metalogix and AvePoint

One final aspect of the acquisition that many will be watching will be the reaction of the other major player in the space, AvePoint.

This equalizes and extends our game in the compliance and governance area very quickly. One of the things we are always doing is making sure we are the strongest in the content migration movement and the Axceler acquisition got us into the permissions and security market. This [MetaVis] is an add-on to that. It strengthens our compliance and governance play."

The closure of this deal comes within 120 days of Metalogix “upgrading its balance sheet” as Murphy described it through the closure of the Permira refunding.

The recapitalizing was specifically organized to accelerate growth and MetaVis is a key part of that. However, Murphy said the growth strategy will continue.