Company Spotlight EVault

With that vision in mind, Gilmour, EVault’s current CEO and founder, began the company as a small 20-person startup in 1997. Today his firm is made up of more than 160 employees and supplies backup and recovery software and services to more than 9,000 small to large enterprise customers globally.

EVault’s Vice President of Product Management, Richard Heitmann, spoke to Online Backup Reviews and talked about his company’s history and their contribution to the industry.

“We’ve been in this business now for almost 10 years, and we have great stability as a company,” Heitmann said. “The fact that our technology is proven and works… means we’re here to stay and that you can trust us to protect data.”

Heitmann said when they started in 1997, most companies were still using magnetic tape to back data up, but EVault’s grand vision was to develop and deliver a true disk-to-disk backup solution for companies. Gilmour would soon cross paths with a man who shared in that vision: Ray Ganong, owner of the Ontario, Canada-based VytalVault Inc., one of the industry's first managed storage service providers. VytalVault had come up with an innovative block-level scanning technique that backed up only the changed portions of files, rather than the entire system.

In 2001, EVault decided to expand their technology and expertise by acquiring VytalVault. They soon developed EVault DeltaPro™, the innovative delta processing technology, which provided the foundation for their online services. Around that time, they also launched EVault Protect, an online disk-to-disk backup and recovery service, which remains their most popular online backup service.

In January of 2007, EVault was acquired by Seagate Technology, a worldwide leader in the design, manufacture and marketing of hard drives. With Seagate behind them, Heitmann says EVault obtained even greater stability, credibility and brand recognition.

As it stands today, Heitmann says things are looking bright for the company. EVault was recently named one of the fastest growing technology companies in America and ranked 104th on Deloitte Technology’s Fast 500. He explained that EVault tries not to become too distracted by the many market and technology forces, which come and go very fast. Instead, EVault remains strictly committed to the business needs of today’s clients – the key to their success.

“I think a lot of technologies have come and gone. Some stay, some evolve into something else,” Heitmann said. “But we really strive to focus and understand the current pain points of our customers… and then build and deliver solutions that meet their needs.”

EVault remains purely a business-to-business company, providing backup solutions for the unique needs of small offices, all the way up to large corporate enterprises with multiple locations. He says many businesses in highly regulated industries, such as those in financial services, health care and legal verticals, choose EVault because they meet the highest compliance certifications. Every year, since 2002, EVault’s seven data centers throughout North America obtain SAS 70, Type II certification, the highest auditing standard developed by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants.

Their “true end-to-end encryption” of data is another reason businesses choose them Heitmann said. EVault promises 256-bit AES encryption, ensuring that no one has access to client’s data, not even their vault administrators.

Another key advantage to their services lies in EVault's ability to be flexibile with customers. EVault's offerings are tailored to each of their clients, allowing businesses to move from one program to another as needs change. They also provide customers a choice of either using their online backup solution for a monthly fee, as software to manage internally on their own, or as a managed service with companies owning it or outsourcing the management of their environment to EVault.