Tacit plus Mobiliti equal remote services consolidation

Tacit acquired a software company called Mobiliti this week. Mobiliti software makes remote shared drives appear local when users are disconnected from the WAN and provides backup service for desktops and laptops over the WAN. Tacit is a startup that began in the wide area file service (WAFS) market and is now branching out to provide application acceleration and protection services over the WAN. This acquisition personifies consolidation trends happening in the data processing industry over the past couple years:

• IT administrators are consolidating servers, storage and services in the data center
• IT administrators want to extend the value of consolidation out to the edge of the network into remote offices and for mobile users where trained IT staff is in short supply
• IT administrators want to consolidate remote application(e.g. Email), storage (e.g. shared files and backup) and networking (e.g. DNS, firewall) and print services.
• Storage, networking and systems vendors have recognized the value of the consolidated remote services and a feeding frenzy of M&A and consolidation activity has begun.

ESG expects continued consolidation of branch office services including WAN optimization, WAN application acceleration, remote backup and archival. As the rest of the market cuts its teeth delivering services to remote departments and branch offices, Tacit can now extend services to desktop and mobile users. Small and home office users are the next obvious benefactors of this technology. How remote IT services will ultimately be packaged, purchased and serviced is yet to be seen, but it’s clear that Tacit’s acquisition of Mobiliti technology which extends the benefits of remote services consolidation to mobile users is a brilliant strategic move.