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Skyview Capital Acquired EMC’s Syncplicity

Storage giant selling part assets: a rarity

Skyview Capital, LLC, a global private investment firm, has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire the Syncplicity LLC‘s enterprise file sync and share business from EMC Corp.

EMC will retain a financial interest in Syncplicity.

Syncplicity is an enterprise-grade online file sharing and mobile collaboration solution that provides users with experience and tools they desire and gives IT the security and control it needs.

Unlike other solutions that force users to store all information in the cloud, Syncplicity gives organizations flexibility through its hybrid approach. IT departments can create rules based on user, group or folder policy to determine whether files should be stored in the cloud or in an on-premise storage array.

Following its acquisition three years ago by EMC, Syncplicity has emerged as a growing standard for companies in a variety of industries such as technology, health care, financial services, education, law and engineering services. In addition to broad customer adoption, Syncplicity has been named a leader in both The Forrester Wave: File Sync and Share Platforms, Q3 2013 and Gartner’s 2014 Magic Quadrant for Enterprise File Synchronization and Sharing.

Syncplicity’s best of breed, flexible hybrid solution coupled with its tremendous growth under EMC, made this investment decision an easy one for us. Under our ownership, Syncplicity will maintain its leadership position in this market through the rapid development of new capabilities and continued enhancement of end user experience. We are excited about EMC’s continued commitment to Syncplicity’s growth, and welcome Syncplicity’s employees and customers to the Skyview family,” said Alex Soltani, chairman and CEO, Skyview Capital.

Syncplicity has redefined the expectations of file sync and sharing in the enterprise, changing it from an unauthorized rogue application that employees use without IT approval to one that is blessed by IT, easily integrates with a company’s existing investments in email, storage and collaboration solutions and delivers a great user experience,” said Jonathan Huberman, CEO of Syncplicity upon closing of the acquisition. “By focusing exclusively on and investing heavily in this rapidly growing market, Syncplicity has an enormous opportunity to accelerate product innovation, attract a broad ecosystem of partners and resellers and drive customer adoption.”

Syncplicity experienced great momentum as an EMC business in a highly dynamic and hyper-competitive landscape,” added Jeremy Burton, president of products and marketing, EMC information infrastructure. “However, the standalone EFSS market is evolving rapidly; customers are continually looking for new end-user features and functionality to enable their increasingly mobile workforce. This is a step away from EMC’s core infrastructure strength. This move is designed to ensure that Syncplicity is adequately positioned for success in the evolving EFSS market and to enable EMC to increase our focus on core EMC Information Infrastructure investments. EMC remains a financial stakeholder and committed to Syncplicity’s growth. The EMC salesforce will continue selling Syncplicity as part of the EMC Select partner program and EMC will remain a large-scale Syncplicity customer.”

The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to close this month.

Specific terms of the transaction are confidential.

Comments

According to our database on M&As in the worldwide storage industry, EMC has acquired 79 storage companies since 1994. The giant never sold anyone with the exception of Rocket Software acquiring small EMC assets concerning mainframe data management software in 2009 for an unknown price.

Syncplicity, start-up born in 2007, got $2.6 million in financial funding and was bought by EMC in May 2012, also for a sum not reported, but the acquired company is now facing a lot of huge competitors in this field like leader Box, Citrix, Dropbox, Google, Microsoft among others.

Based in Los Angeles, CA, Skyview has a small portfolio of technology companies including NewNet Communication Technologies, Tekelec Mobile Messaging and Traxcom.

In the press release is cited the name of Jonathan Huberman, CEO of Syncplicity upon closing of the acquisition. It's not a surprise as he is currently president of portfolio operations for the buyer Skyview Capital, and also president and CEO of Newnet. More than that, he is a well known storage veteran being between 2006 and 2008 CEO of Iomega, acquired by EMC for $213 million, and then becoming more than three years EMC's president, consumer and small business products division.

About the Syncplicity's acquisition, SVP marketing Jeff Denworth SVP marketing of CTERA, also in enterprise file sync and share (EFSS), commented:" The sale of Syncplicity by EMC is not surprising - the solution was offered both as a service, where it competed with well-funded players and freemium models, and as a platform for enterprise deployment, where it failed to pass muster as a fully private, behind-the-firewall solution. As CTERA's annual survey has shown (supported by other research by 451 and Gartner), the trend is towards a private (including hosted private or VPC) EFSS model where data security and governance are under tighter IT control. Syncplicity doesn't satisfy those requirements and therefore didn't fit well with EMC's customer profile."

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