ExaGrid recorded the best third quarter in its 23-year history, with double-digit year-over-year growth and a record volume of bookings from deals worth more than $1 million. The privately held backup target appliance vendor now claims more than 5,000 customers across 108 countries and a rolling four-quarter competitive win rate above 70 percent.

CEO Bill Andrews said: "ExaGrid continues to grow and has become the largest independent backup storage vendor in the world … We are getting into and winning more and more larger deals including new customer deals over $1 million. In fact, we had the most bookings from over seven figure deals in our history."

The Marlborough, Massachusetts company sells tiered backup storage: a deduplication-free landing zone for fast ingest and restore, plus globally deduplicated retention storage that can further shrink backups already deduplicated by Commvault, Veeam and other backup applications. Appliances scale out with deduplication operating across the fleet, and an AI-powered retention time lock protects recovery points against ransomware.

Who is ExaGrid displacing?

With its 70 percent win rate, ExaGrid most often replaces primary hard disk arrays running behind the backup application — Dell PowerStore, HPE Alletra and NetApp eSeries — followed by purpose-built backup targets Dell Data Domain (PowerProtect) and HPE StoreOnce. Its most frequent competitors are the big three storage vendors: Dell, HPE and NetApp.

Andrews noted a shift in the competitive set: "We are not seeing Everpure SSD anymore as the price of SSD has gone through the moon and is now too expensive for corporate data center backup." Hitachi Vantara appears periodically, he said, less often than before.

What is the financial picture?

Andrews said the company runs debt-free and self-funding: "We continue to generate cash every quarter and as you know we have zero debt of any kind. We don't even have an accounts receivable line. … Our win rate remains strong. Our customer retention rate remains strong. We do over 50 percent of business now, outside of the United States. We have far more sales reps outside the US than inside the US."

He added that ExaGrid is "beating the CY2026 business plan for bookings, revenue, profitability, free cash flow, EBITDA, etc."

Andrews summed up the quarter: "Our competitive win rate, customer retention rate, NPS score, and percentage of customers on maintenance and support remain the highest in the backup storage industry. Our growth rate is accelerating [and] We are having a very solid year and the company is pumped up."

Could NetApp be a buyer?

The company's independence has historical resonance. NetApp tried to buy Data Domain in 2009, only for EMC to snatch it away at the last minute; Dell then acquired EMC in 2016 and became the largest backup appliance vendor. Against that corporate memory, NetApp's failure to acquire ExaGrid looks like a missed opportunity.

ExaGrid would be a straight tuck-in acquisition: its appliances complement NetApp's ONTAP and StorageGrid systems without competing against them. A growing ExaGrid would bring positive cash flow, give NetApp reps cross-sell access to ExaGrid's installed base, and offer a path to chip away at Dell's Data Domain franchise.

Founded in 2002 by CTO Dave Therrien, ExaGrid is headquartered in Marlborough, Massachusetts. Andrews has been president and CEO since 2005. The board includes Therrien, Andrews and representatives from investors Investor Growth Capital, Lead Edge Capital and Sigma Partners.

With bookings beating plan, accelerating growth and a 70 percent win rate against the three largest storage vendors, ExaGrid enters 2026 as the independent backup target market's clear benchmark — and an increasingly conspicuous acquisition target.