The Carlyle Group-owned Arctera is being acquired by the Cloud Software Group.
Arctera is the collection of Veritas assets left behind by Cohesity when it acquired Veritas at the end of last year. These assets were put into new business Arctera, run by CEO Lawrence Wong, with three business units centered on the existing Backup Exec (protection), Data Compliance, and InfoScale (resilience) products.
The Cloud Software Group (CSG) is a collection of enterprise software businesses including Citrix, TIBCO, IBI, Spotfire and Jaspersoft. CSG is led by CEO Tom Krause, an ex-Broadcom Software Group President and, before that, CFO. He left Broadcom in September 2022 when Vista Equity Partners and Evergreen Coast Capital Corp., an affiliate of activist investor Elliott Investment Management, acquired Citrix Systems to combine it with TIBCO Software, and formed CSG as the umbrella holding company. The whole transaction was valued at $16.5 billion.
Four months later, in January 2023, CSG laid off 15 percent of the CSG workforce. It also arranged that Citrix and TIBCO, as well as many of the brands that existed within them – such as NetScaler, ShareFile, XenServer, Jaspersoft and others – would operate as separate business units, retaining their own brands and delivering their core products.
Krause then said: “We have established a foundation from which we can build a tremendous amount of value for our customers, giving us the cash flow to invest in our products, technology, and the future acquisitions that will put Cloud Software Group on a path to becoming one of the largest software companies in the world.”
And now Arctera gets added to the CSG portfolio, with the transaction terms kept secret. It will operate as another standalone business unit within the Cloud Software Group portfolio. Arctera has around 30,000 global customers, more than 1,500 employees, and generates $400 million-plus of annual revenue. The potential acquisition price based on that revenue could vary between 3 to 10x depending upon its growth rate and prospects. A 5:1 price/sales ratio between Arctera’s valuation and its annual revenue would suggest it’s worth $2 billion. Arctera’s reported >40 percent adjusted EBITDA margins and its strategic fit within Cloud Software Group’s portfolio could justify a higher multiple, perhaps 8x.
Krause stated: “This acquisition marks an exciting milestone for Cloud Software Group and an important step forward in our long-term growth strategy. We have a strong track record of continuing to invest in our portfolio of leading software brands, as evidenced by our work to improve profitability and long-term sustainability of the Citrix and TIBCO businesses. Looking ahead, we aim to acquire at-scale enterprise-focused software businesses that provide proven mission-critical capabilities and high value to public and private sector customers while also ensuring they’re a good fit to operate within our proven Cloud Software Group model.”
He added: “We are confident that Arctera’s portfolio of Data Resilience, Data Compliance and Data Protection products will be a natural complementary addition to Cloud Software Group. We look forward to expanding the services and products we provide for both sets of customers through this acquisition.”
Wong said: “Our mission has been to build on our pedigree of innovation across our three distinct product lines, each tailored to solve the most demanding data challenges for their customers. With Cloud Software Group’s global resources, industry leading portfolio and seasoned leadership team, Arctera will be even better positioned to continue helping customers manage one of their most valuable assets: data.”
The transaction, funded by cash on CSG’s balance sheet, is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2025, subject to certain regulatory approvals and customary closing conditions.
Comment
Arctera has been actively developing its products and go-to-market channels with announcements including:
- August 2025: Updated Arctera Insight Platform to reduce the compliance risks associated with AI deployments, enabling customers to capture the input and output of Large Language Models (LLMs), chronicle AI data, integrate it with wider employee data, unlock corporate insight, and prevent the upload of sensitive data to public AI tools.
- June 2025: Arctera, Wasabi Technologies, and distie TD SYNNEX launched a joint, channel-exclusive data protection offering, combining Arctera Backup Exec with Wasabi Hot Cloud Storage, available through a single SKU via TD SYNNEX, providing turnkey integration with end-to-end protection across physical, virtual, cloud, and SaaS environments.
- May 2025: Arctera collaborated with Red Hat and its InfoScale cyber-resilience product was certified on Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization.
- May 2025: Arctera updated its InfoScale cyber resilience product, adding real-time, application-aware resilience, cyber-ready operational defense, and proactive recovery
- February 2025: Arctera unveiled a new brand for its Data Compliance platform – “Arctera Insight Platform” – and announced capabilities to improve the way organizations manage compliance, reduce risks, and prepare for audits.
- January 2025: Arctera positioned as a Leader in the inaugural Gartner Magic Quadrant for Digital Communications Governance and Archiving Solutions (DCGA).
We expect to see substantial AI-related developments by Arctera, both to improve its product’s operations, and to feed data to AI models and agents, as well as CSG encouraging cross-selling between its businesses.
