Barracuda Networks plans Australian cloud within months

Storage and security appliance provider Barracuda Networks is on the cusp of establishing an Australian cloud platform to improve performance and address data-sovereignty issues for local customers.

ANZ country manager Mike Romans confirmed the company is “in final negotiations” with an Australian supplier of data-centre capacity, from which the company will establish a local operation “within three months” to complement its growing worldwide push into cloud-based email deduplication, backup and other services.

“We’re seeing quite a lot of demand for cloud-based solutions,” Romans said, “especially when you’re talking about our archiving and backup products. Better latency will be a natural result, since all of our services in the cloud come from our head office in California. This marries in beautifully with some of the things we have on the ground already.”

Australia is the company’s third-largest market, providing around 10% of the company’s revenues from a product set that began life in the email spam and virus filtering market. In subsequent years, Barracuda’s capabilities have expanded to include load balancing, email archiving, firewalls, secure virtual private networks, backup software, and PBX telephony software.

These capabilities have been acquired as well as developed, with six major companies and software capabilities purchased from 2007 to 2009 and e-signature provider SignNow acquired in April. Strong annualised growth figures, of over 30% per year since 2003, had boosted customer numbers to over 150,000 worldwide by the time co-founder and CEO, Dean Drako, resigned in July 2012.

By bringing together complementary capabilities onto a single platform – and, more recently, combining them with cloud-based tools for data storage – Barracuda is looking to extend its reputation as a one-stop shop. The company plans to use its heavily integrated systems to stake out its claim in the local cloud-services market, and will engage local resellers as managed service providers to deliver its services as customers demand.

The company’s Australian cloud investment will support this strategy, providing a faster onshore experience for users of Barracuda services like the file-sharing site Copy.com, which got a recent boost when Barracuda pushed the capacity of its free service upwards to 15GB per user.

“The security and storage conversation really goes hand in hand, and we’re finding that to be a great benefit,” ANZ sales manager Greg Douglas said. “By tying these solutions together and making it easier for users to utilise them, we’re solving a lot of the problems around multiple vendors, and eliminating the hassle around bringing in licenses and subscriptions.”

Barracuda’s increased cloud-storage profile will support its push deeper into the security and process automation space. Seamless links between data-management tools and cloud-storage capabilities will provide new options for customers that just want an easier way to get things done, Romans said, reiterating the importance of an Australian presence as a competitive differentiator.

“Because we’re already in the market, we’re very familiar with the demands around data sovereignty, and protecting company and individual data,” he said. “We’re eager to get our own private cloud, and our own data centre services, here in Australia. It really makes sense to bring things closer to home.”