Recovery as a Service – Cloud Computing Today

Axcient Releases Direct To Cloud Offering To Bolster Its Recovery As A Service Portfolio

Cloud-based recovery as a service leader Axcient today announces a Direct to Cloud offering that enables customers to replicate their IT infrastructure in the cloud without use of an appliance. Axcient’s Direct to Cloud platform allows customers to replicate their servers, desktops and laptops within Axcient’s cloud environment to ensure the continuity of business operations and enhance the operational agility of end users. The Axcient Business Recovery Cloud allows customers to create a replica of their entire infrastructure by way of an internet connection that creates an initial snapshot of an infrastructure at a designated point in time, and then subsequently creates incremental backups in tandem with customer requirements. In contrast to replicating swaths of files, the Axcient Business Recovery Cloud creates a cloud-based copy of the physical and virtual servers, laptop images and desktops. Customers can monitor the health of their cloud infrastructure by means of an Axcient dashboard as represented below:

Axcient’s Direct to Cloud replication offering gives customers the flexibility to replicate their infrastructures within the cloud without the need to purchase or maintain either a physical or virtual appliance. Moreover, the solution features instant failover functionality marked by the launch of a virtual replica within the Axcient Business Recovery Cloud to ensure the maintenance of business continuity. Customers can access Axcient’s Direct to Cloud platform by means of an encrypted internet connection that allows for the secure transmission of files between a host infrastructure and Axcient’s environment. As a result of today’s release, Axcient becomes one of the few Recovery as a Service vendors that can claim options for cloud-based backup and recovery that include a hardware appliance, software-based appliance or a direct internet connection as the modality for enabling its cloud-based recovery platform. The platform’s range of deployment options renders it ideal for small to medium-sized businesses that require a production-grade platform at a reasonable price-point in comparison to consumer-grade options that focus primarily on backing up assemblages of files.

Axcient Raises $25M In Series E Funding And Reveals VAR Program With Innovative Compensation Model

On February 18, Recovery as a Service leader Axcient announced the finalization of $25M in Series E funding in a round led by Industry Ventures with additional participation from existing investors Allegis Capital, Peninsula Ventures, Scale Venture Partners and Thomvest Ventures. The round validates the business model of Axcient’s cloud-based recovery as a service platform as exemplified by 50% year over year growth in customers signed in 2014, Axcient’s acquisition of DirectRestore, more than 30 releases and enhancements to the Axcient business recovery cloud and the release of the second generation of Axcient’s virtual appliance. The $25M in funding will also be used to fund a novel method of compensating channel partners that Axcient will use to enhance distribution of its product. Whereas SaaS solutions have typically struggled to achieve traction in a VAR sales partner model because of low monthly margins for sales professionals, Axcient proposes to offer channel partners up front compensation for the sale of its business recovery cloud solution. Axcient brands the up front compensation model under the acronym SaaS: FLO that stands for SaaS Fully Loaded Option. Axcient’s strategy of expanding its sales pipeline by means of partnerships with VARs under the terms of an innovative compensation model promises to increase its market traction in a landscape that includes the likes of more established cloud-based business continuity brands such as Symantec and EMC. In a phone interview with Cloud Computing Today, Axcient’s Director of Product Marketing Daniel Kuperman noted that although Axcient faces the challenge of educating its VARs about the business and technological benefits of its cloud-based recovery as a service platform, it stands to benefit immensely from the potentialities implicit in introducing the agility and operational simplicity of its platform to a wider range of customers. Assuming Axcient can succeed at training its VAR ecosystem, it stands poised to consolidate on its successes in 2014 and continue to stake out a leadership position in the rapidly growing cloud-based recovery as a service space, particularly because of the richness of its technology for empowering customers to perform granular recoveries of specific files and folders in addition to larger swaths of infrastructure. Wednesday Series E round brings the total capital raised by Axcient to roughly $85M.

Axcient Offers Free Local Replication And Recovery With Its Virtual Appliance Solution

Today, Recovery as a Service vendor Axcient is rendering its virtual appliance product offering free to customers for an unlimited time period. Under the terms of the offering, customers can take advantage of Axcient Free to enjoy backup and recovery for 20 TB of data for a maximum of three servers. Axcient Free can be sampled by downloading the virtual appliance and configuring it such that customers enjoy local protection and restoration functionality at a price point and with an ease of deployment that renders it attractive in comparison to local backup solutions such as Symantec Backup Exec. More importantly, Axcient Free gives customers the opportunity to sample Axcient’s infrastructure before considering a transition to the company’s enterprise-grade, cloud-based recovery as a service solution. Because Axcient’s recovery as a service offering leverages the cloud to deliver backup, disaster recovery and high-availability of IT infrastructures, it can deliver a richness of restoration functionality that exceeds legacy, onsite backup solutions. For example, Axcient’s version control features and the ability to locate and restore specific files without restoring entire servers gives customers a degree of restoration flexibility that facilitates the larger goal of enabling high-availability of mission-critical applications. As such, its recovery as a service offering stands poised to revolutionize enterprise options for backup and recovery by foregrounding recovery and availability, while concurrently leveraging the economics and agility of the cloud to render local backup solutions obsolete.

Axcient Unveils Swap Out Program With Rolex Reward For Its Recovery As a Service Solution

Recovery as a Service vendor Axcient revealed details of a “swap-out” program designed to provoke customers that currently use vendors such as Symantec, Datto, eFolder and Stroragecraft into swapping out their existing backup and recovery solution in favor of Axcient’s cloud-based service. Axcient claims that service providers that have switched to its cloud-based backup and recovery solution experience a 30% increase in margins in addition to the ability to protect designated infrastructures in less than 15 minutes. Axcient’s announcement of its swap-out campaign comes roughly five weeks after its release of a virtual appliance that accelerates the installation process and reduces the total cost of ownership specific to deploying its solution. More than a simple backup and recovery service, Axcient’s cloud-based solution provides an innovative interface for recovering specific files as opposed to entire swaths of infrastructure by way of impressive search functionality that allows customers to locate backups of the files or folders that they are seeking to restore. Because its platform is built within a cloud-based infrastructure, Axcient promises to disrupt the economics of backup solutions for the enterprise by delivering a business continuity offering that competes in price, agility and richness of recovery functionality. Customers who exchange their current backup solution for Axcient by April 15, 2014 will be rewarded with a Rolex watch worth up to $20,000.