Axcient Increases Performance, Lowers Cost Of Cloud Data Protection

As part of a simplification of SKUs, Axcient is now offering unlimited storage capacity as a way to make it easier for MSPs to order and pay for storage capacity without worrying about how much they need, Angus Robertson, Axcient’s chief revenue officer, tells CRN.

Cloud data management and business availability technology developer Axcient Monday unveiled several enhancements to its offerings that it said will help increase the performance and lower the cost of using the cloud to protect data.

The changes are all about Axcient's journey to be a complete data protection provider for MSPs, said Angus Robertson, chief revenue officer for the Denver-based company.

"We offer a complete platform," Robertson told CRN. "We believe we can do that with our partnerships and by controlling TCO [total cost of ownership]. … We want to simplify billing and management while decreasing costs and the need for services calls and minimizing the time techs have to spend on the hardware."

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Axcient Monday unveiled three enhancements to its Replibit data protection platform. Replibit was previously an independent company before being purchased in 2016 by MSP-focused and cloud-focused data protection provider eFolder. eFolder and Axcient in merged in mid-2017, combining eFolder's data protection and file sync and share technology with Axcient's advanced replication technologies.

The first new enhancement is the simplification of its offerings with a move to cut the number of SKUs from over 1,000 to now only four, Robertson said.

The number of SKUs just grew over time and via multiple acquisitions, he said. The four new SKUs, which bring MSPs and their customers unlimited storage capacity, include server SKUs and workstation SKUs, with an option for MSPs to use either the Axcient Cloud or their own cloud for storing the backup data, he said.

As part of the simplification of SKUs, Axcient is now offering unlimited storage capacity as a way to make it easier for MSPs to order and pay for storage capacity without worrying about how much they need, Robertson said.

"We also now offer unlimited retention time," he said. "Our competitors typically offer three or five years, but certain regulated industries may need seven years in some cases."

Unlimited cloud storage capacity and retention time is a huge deal for MSPs, said Leo Bletnitsky, president and founder of LBA Networking, a Las Vegas-based MSP and Axcient channel partner.

With Axcient, MSPs have been able to pool the cloud storage capacity of multiple customers so that unused capacity from one customer could offset the larger capacity requirements of another, Bletnitsky told CRN.

Having unlimited capacity means MSPs will not have to worry that customers’ requirements exceed the pooled capacity, he said. "I can see in the long term this will be very positive as we get close to the kind of capacity where this becomes an issue," he said.

The second major enhancement is providing near-instant RTO (recovery time to operations) going from hours to minutes and no longer being dependent upon the size of the protected system, Robertson said.

Having near-instant recovery brings several benefits to MSPs and their clients, Bletnitsky said. "This will make it easier to test backups and recoveries without scheduling in advance," he said. "And it means getting customers up and running immediately, which is a great selling point. I'm excited about this."

The third major enhancement is the launch of new backup and disaster recovery appliance hardware, Robertson said. The new hardware is less costly than the previous platform, but includes such capabilities as hot-swap storage capacity along with an intelligent platform management interface (IPMI), which he said decreases tech support calls and lets MSPs automate service via the IPMI alerts.

Improving the performance of the BDR appliance is important because the faster the backups can be done, the less intrusive the process, Bletnitsky said.

"This will let us do more backups in a day to reduce the amount of data loss from a failure,” he said. "Most of our customers cannot afford to lose a day's worth of data. We were looking at building out our own BDR appliances, but now we'll definitely take a look at the new Axcient appliances.":