California tech giant buys Garner company known for remote work technology
NetApp, a California cloud data company with a large presence in Research Triangle Park, is buying a Garner tech company known for products that facilitate remote work — a booming part of the technology landscape during the coronavirus pandemic.
NetApp said Wednesday morning that it had acquired Garner-based CloudJumper, which makes software for virtual desktops and remote work products. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.
NetApp would not say whether discussions with CloudJumper had taken place before the pandemic, though Vikram Bhatia, NetApp’s vice president of cloud strategy, told The News & Observer that “acquisition decisions by NetApp are not taken lightly, these are things that are discussed ... over long periods of time.”
CloudJumper helps companies manage remote desktops on a variety of different cloud infrastructures, like Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services or Google Cloud. The company, founded by Al Cinelli, traces its history back more than 20 years in the Raleigh area and highlights on its website that it has never taken venture capital money in its 20-year history.
Bhatia said CloudJumper will help NetApp connect its customers to their work more efficiently.
“As more people are working remotely, enterprises and entities want to deploy solutions that enable their workforce to work efficiently,” he said. “The demand to work remotely and offer cloud-based infrastructure solutions that enable users to connect seamlessly and very easily makes a lot of sense at this time.”
NetApp is one of the largest employers in RTP. The company, which posted revenue of $6.2 billion in 2019, at one point had more than 1,700 employees in the Triangle, though it has had layoffs in recent years, The News & Observer previously reported. In 2012, the company received an incentive package from the state of North Carolina to expand its workforce here.
J.D. Helms, the president of CloudJumper, said his team will transition to NetApp’s RTP campus following the acquisition — though when that happens remains to be seen. CloudJumper employees have been working remotely for the past six weeks because of the coronavirus, and Helms said they will eventually have the option to work remotely or at the NetApp office when that is allowed.
Helms said the company has about 30 employees in the Raleigh area. They will all be offered positions at NetApp and, in fact, the team will be growing, said Helms, who will take on the title of vice president of modern workspaces at NetApp.
Helms said demand for CloudJumper’s services has been “through the roof” since the coronavirus sent millions of workers home, and he believes this will be the start of a more permanent trend toward employees working from home.
“This is part of a bigger story for businesses,” he said. “At some point things will go back to some level of normal, but this has opened the eyes of businesses.”
Many companies, he believes, now have proof that they can still maintain high levels of productivity with their workers away from the office. “This validates that it is possible,” he said.
It also highlights the need for businesses to have a plan for emergency situations. Right now a virus is taxing their infrastructure — but it could be a hurricane or a snowstorm that keeps employees away from the office next.
“When a hurricane comes through and your employees can’t get to the office for a week, how do you operate?” he said. “The cloud is the perfect scenario that makes that versatility.”
This story was produced with financial support from a coalition of partners led by Innovate Raleigh as part of an independent journalism fellowship program. The N&O maintains full editorial control of the work. Learn more; go to bit.ly/newsinnovate
This story was originally published April 29, 2020 at 11:49 AM.
