Canadian enterprise computing company OpenText has agreed to purchase Boston’s Carbonite, a pioneering provider of cloud-based data backup services for homes and businesses, in a deal worth $1.42 billion. The acquisition comes just months after the resignation of Carbonite chief executive Mohamad Ali.
Founded in 2005, Carbonite was among the first companies to offer consumers an easy way to back up their personal computers by storing the data in the Internet cloud.
Ali took the reins from Carbonite founder David Friend in 2014. At the time, Friend was under pressure to put Carbonite on the auction block, but under Ali’s leadership, the company shifted its strategy, to focus primarily on data backups for small- and medium-sized businesses. In addition, Carbonite branched into the data security business, with its $618.5 million acquisition in March of Webroot, a Colorado maker of antimalware products. Webroot was the biggest of several acquisitions by Carbonite as the company sought to become a full-service provider of data protection. These included rival backup companies MailStore, Data Castle, eVault, and Mozy.
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