Just shy of its one year, $500 million investment in Veeam Software, private equity firm Insight Partners announced today that it has entered a deal to acquire all of the cloud-focused data management company in an all-cash transaction valued at around $5 billion. 

Insight plans to bring the Switzerland-based company across the Atlantic to become a U.S. company, with a U.S.-based leadership team. It also announced plans to support its global expansion from offices in 30 countries and with customers across 160 countries.

“Veeam’s strong growth, coupled with high customer retention, unparalleled data management solutions, and the opportunities to expand services into new markets, make Veeam one of the most exciting software companies in the world today,” said Insight Partners managing director and Veeam board member Mike Triplett in a prepared statement. 

William Largent has been tapped to lead Veeam after the deal closes, which is expected during the first quarter. Largent currently serves as Veeam's EVP of operations. Veeam co-founders Ratmir Timashev and Andrei Baronov will step down from the board of directors once the deal closes, but will remain as consultants.

Veeam specializes in backup and disaster recovery, and its software runs in on-premises data centers and across multiple clouds. The company says it brings in about $1 billion in sales per year and has more than 325,000 customers, adding 50,000 new customers every year. It also touts that 81% of the Fortune 500 use its software.

Gartner has ranked Veeam as a leader in backup and data recovery in its Magic Quadrant chart for three consecutive years, and IDC tagged Veeam as the fastest growing vendor in the space during the first half of 2019. Others in that IDC ranking include Dell EMC, Veritas, and IBM. 

“Anything that relates to data management and data protection in the cloud: replication, migration, cloud optimization, cost optimization, as well as artificial intelligence and machine learning as it relates to data management, all are on our radar," Timashev said in an interview with SDxCentral earlier this year. "It’s very critical for us to dominate data management in multi-cloud. This space is very hot."

The news comes on the heels of Insight’s move earlier this week to acquire IoT security startup Armis for $1.1 billion. The deal marked the first cybersecurity acquisition of 2020, and it’s the largest-ever enterprise IoT security software acquisition, according to the companies.

As the number of connected devices explodes — Gartner expects 25 billion of these by 2021 — they represent the fastest-growing attack landscape for organizations globally.

“Security is one of the biggest factors limiting IoT expansion,” Bill Curtis, resident analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, told SDxCentral in an earlier interview. “IoT security has to be built-in, not added on.”

But, according to Armis’ research, by 2021 up to 90% of all devices will be unmanaged and unsecured.