Altaro (Hornetsecurity)

Altaro is a Sliema-founded backup and data-protection software company best known for Altaro VM Backup, a popular Hyper-V and VMware backup product aimed squarely at the SMB and mid-market segment that was under-served by enterprise tools like Veeam and Commvault. Founded in 2009 by David Vella, the company built a reputation for licensing simplicity, predictable pricing, and an MSP-friendly distribution model that made it a go-to tool for IT service providers managing dozens to hundreds of small-business virtualization environments. In 2021 Altaro was acquired by Hornetsecurity, the German cloud-email-security group, and its product line was folded into Hornetsecurity's broader Microsoft 365 backup and security portfolio — one of the largest software exits ever recorded out of Malta. It is a clean example of how a small-island software team, far from the typical European tech hubs, built an internationally relevant product that ultimately became a strategic asset for a much larger European cybersecurity consolidator.