BakBone Acquires ColdSpark, Brings Messaging To Data Protection

That developer, Broomfield, Colo.-based ColdSpark, develops enterprise solutions and platforms for e-mail processing and delivery.

San Diego-based BakBone said on Thursday that it will pay just less than $16 million in cash and stocks for ColdSpark.

The acquisition came just 10 days after BakBone acquired the technology assets of Asempra Technologies, including software for continuous data protection for such applications as Microsoft Exchange and SQL Server.

Jeff Drescher, vice president of marketing at BakBone, said the two acquisitions have been aimed at helping his company focus more on managing the applications.

That is important, Drescher said, as more and more data is created by such applications. "For example, up to 50 percent of data is now coming from e-mails," he said. "And people are tying corporate communications and IM into their e-mail systems."

BakBone's traditional focus has been on data protection. However, much of what ColdSpark does is directly tied to data storage, such as setting policies and capturing data before e-mails are sent and stored, Drescher said.

BakBone is in no way moving from its core focus on data protection, Drescher said. "But going forward, we'll be focused on the disk side of storage and implementing a lot of technology related to policy-based data and applications," he said.

The ColdSpark platform is open in nature and is expected to easily integrate with BakBone's products, Drescher said.

Scott Brown, co-founder and CTO of ColdSpark, will stay with BakBone where he will be the general manager of the company's Message Management division.