Phil Goodwin

Acronis, a pioneer in cyber protection, unveils the details of the new Acronis #CyberFit Partner Program. This update to the company’s existing program places increased emphasis on supporting partner development, particularly for cloud-based services, while rewarding service providers and resellers for their expertise, commitment, and growth with Acronis through performance-based benefits and financial compensation. Acronis’ cloud ecosystem has more than doubled since 2018 and last year saw the largest growth in the number of new partners, with a 30% increase in the number of active service provider partners during 2020. Modern protection challenges Now, based on feedback from its partners, Acronis provides a partner program that supports forward-thinking go-to-market strategies – enabling partners to earn more while deploying cloud-based solutions that are uniquely suited to meet their clients’ modern protection challenges. “While adoption of cloud-based solutions was steady during the past decade, 2020 accelerated that trend tremendously as the COVID-19 pandemic forced organizations to pivot to remote work environments that rely on cloud solutions,” said Serguei “SB” Beloussov, Acronis’ Founder and CEO. “Managed service providers played a major role in making that happen, and we want to help all of our partners take advantage of those opportunities. The new #CyberFit Partner Program is designed with those MSP and MSSP partners in mind, while also ensuring that traditional partners and resellers who want to become MSPs have the world-class support they need to succeed.” Acronis partner program Reimagined as a unified program for service providers and resellers, the Acronis #CyberFit Partner Program now includes: Financial incentives that increase as partners advance within the program's levels, including rebates and proposal-based market development funds (MDF). Marketing and sales assets, with additional marketing automation tools and renewal tools coming in March 2021. Account management assistance that increases with program level, with dedicated marketing support available to Platinum partners. Enhanced technical support to enable faster response. Sales and technical training via the Acronis #CyberFit Academy, with courses available both live and online. Providing total marketing Acronis’ new #CyberFit Partner Program was designed to create this exact kind of relationship" Given the breadth of the enhanced #CyberFit Partner Program, industry observers have noted that Acronis is clearly providing the support that many in the IT channel are seeking. “In today’s digital-focused world, it is critical for vendors to connect easily and efficiently with partners to optimize the user experience,” said Phil Goodwin, Research Director, IDC. “Acronis’ new #CyberFit Partner Program was designed to create this exact kind of relationship. By enhancing this offering over the past few years, Acronis has demonstrated its commitment to providing total marketing, technical and financial support to its partners now and in the future with a dedication to cyber protection solutions.” Cyber protection solutions Acronis also revealed that beginning in March, partners will be able to engage with a new Partner Portal, a platform that will make account management and communication with Acronis easier than ever. “Our partners’ success is our success,” says Acronis Channel Chief Alex Ruslyakov. The launch will be followed by the 2021 Acronis #CyberFit Partner Kickoff event “By increasing our sales, marketing, and technical support tools and training, we’re making it easier than ever for partners to protect and delight their customers with Acronis’ world-class cyber protection solutions. Acronis continues to invest in partner development and growth to our mutual benefit.” The launch will be followed by the 2021 Acronis #CyberFit Partner Kickoff event, held virtually on February 2 at 10 a.m. EST. Attendees will learn more about Acronis’ roadmap for 2021 and what to expect over the course of the year — including additional new tools, licensing models, and training opportunities. Evolving threat landscape In announcing the expanded program, many of Acronis’ existing partners have welcomed the announced changes. “We are excited by the new Acronis partner program,” said Kuo Yoong, Cloud Program Manager, Synnex Australia. “This program incentivizes a stronger partnership between Synnex and Acronis partners to further grow Acronis cybersecurity solutions to protect reseller businesses in the evolving threat landscape.” UbiStor, Inc.’s Chief Executive Officer Dan Hill had a similar reaction, saying, “Today, we are all relying on data like never before, and we are at ease knowing our customer’s data is safe and secure with Acronis’ effective and affordable solutions coupled with UbiStor’s 24/7/365 managed services. We are thrilled to be a part of the newly improved Partner Program and excited to take advantage of the new incentives to work closely with Acronis as a partner.”

Dell Technologies has announced the release of their new Dell EMC PowerProtect DP series integrated appliances and PowerProtect Data Manager Software advancements to help businesses and customers protect, manage and recover data from traditional and modern applications, across core data centers, edge locations and public clouds. PowerProtect Cyber Recovery Dell, the industry renowned company in data protection appliances and software, also announces the release of PowerProtect Cyber Recovery, the first data vaulting solution endorsed by Sheltered Harbor to enhance cyber resiliency in the financial sector.  The rise of multi-cloud strategies and modern applications creates new challenges" "Companies are managing almost 40% more data than last year according to this year's Dell Technologies Global Data Protection Index Snapshot. Along with exponential data growth, the rise of multi-cloud strategies and modern applications creates new challenges," said Jeff Boudreau, President and General Manager for Infrastructure Solutions Group at Dell Technologies. Jeff adds, "Data protection is not a one-size-fits-all proposition. Dell Technologies continues to advance our target and integrated appliances portfolio and software-defined data protection offerings, helping customers manage today's challenges while keeping an eye on what lies ahead." Modern integrated data protection PowerProtect DP series is Dell's next generation integrated data protection appliance, offering complete backup, recovery, replication, de-duplication, cloud readiness with disaster recovery, and long-term retention to the public cloud. PowerProtect DP series appliances help customers manage explosive data growth, lower costs and simplify increasing complexities with an all-in-one solution, offering: Extreme performance: Delivers up to 38% faster backups and up to 45% faster restores. PowerProtect DP also offers instant access and restore of up to 50% greater IOPS3 (Input/Output operations per second), compared to the previous generation, allowing customers to quickly and easily recover critical data. Greater efficiency: Provides up to one petabyte of usable capacity with 30% more logical capacity4, with up to 65:1 data reduction, enabling customers to store more data in the same space with more cost-effective systems. Energy savings: Consumes up to 23% less power than previous generation, delivering significant energy and cost-savings. Multi-cloud strategies and data protection Dell EMC PowerProtect portfolio provides customers with a range of simple, efficient and agile data protection options "The rise of modern applications, multi-cloud strategies and the sheer amount of data created present data protection challenges our company faces every day," said Clifton Dorsey, Vice President, Warrell Corporation, adding "The PowerProtect portfolio, including the new PowerProtect DP series capabilities, help us address these changing IT and data protection requirements." "The Dell EMC PowerProtect portfolio provides customers with a wide variety of simple, efficient and agile data protection options, so that they can choose the approach that best fits their IT strategy," said Steven Ayoub, President, AHEAD, adding "Dell Technologies is a very strong partner, and new offerings like the PowerProtect DP series are changing the game in data protection." Dell EMC PowerProtect Cyber Recovery Dell Technologies announces that Dell EMC PowerProtect Cyber Recovery is the first on-premises turnkey data vaulting solution to receive a Sheltered Harbor endorsement. Sheltered Harbor is the not-for-profit, industry-led initiative dedicated to enhancing the stability and resiliency of the financial sector in the wake of increased cyber-attacks. PowerProtect Cyber Recovery protects customers from cyber threats ranging from ransomware to insider attacks. The solution's CyberSense analytics and machine learning capabilities allow customers to monitor data integrity, ensuring the continued quality of their data. Forensic tools allow customers to discover, diagnose and remediate ongoing attacks. With this endorsement, U.S. financial institutions can easily deploy an endorsed vaulting solution to protect critical customer data from cyber threats. PowerProtect Data Manager PowerProtect Data Manager delivers new value to PowerProtect appliance customers that have cloud, VMware and Kubernetes environments. Data Manager now protects in-cloud workloads in Microsoft Azure and AWS, offering customers greater choice and flexibility in deploying the software. PowerProtect Data Manager now supports the VMware Tanzu portfolio to protect customers' modern applications. New integrations make it the first solution to provide native vCenter Storage Policy Based Management integration for VM protection. Enhanced Kubernetes and cloud data protection Data Manager offers a VMware-certified solution to protect the VMware Cloud Foundation infrastructure layer Customers can save time and better protect their VMs by using well-known workflows from within their VMware vSphere environment to assign data protection policies. Data Manager now also offers a VMware-certified solution to protect the VMware Cloud Foundation infrastructure layer. Data Manager also offers comprehensive protection for containerized modern applications with agentless, application-consistent protection of open source databases, including PostgreSQL and Apache Cassandra, in Kubernetes environments. Customers now can protect Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) and Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) to back up Kubernetes cluster-level resources. "As companies embrace modern IT, they also must adopt data protection solutions that can handle today's challenges without losing sight of what lies ahead," said Phil Goodwin, Research Director, Enterprise Infrastructure Practice, IDC, adding "With these updates to the PowerProtect portfolio, Dell is simultaneously simplifying its portfolio and expanding its capabilities to protect both existing and emerging workload requirements." Dell Technologies On Demand With Dell Technologies On Demand, PowerProtect Data Manager customers can choose how to pay for, consume and manage their appliances. With fully managed services, customers can leave their ongoing data protection operations to Dell experts to monitor, operate and optimize their environment, saving valuable time and reducing the risk factor. Flexible payment solutions enable customers to more effectively budget for IT spending and only pay for technology and services as needed. Availability Dell EMC PowerProtect DP series appliances – DP4400, DP5400, DP5900 and DP8900 – will be available globally in December 2020. PowerProtect Data Manager enhancements are globally available now.

Acronis, a global provider of cyber protection, announced plans to expand its global network of cloud data centers, including new state-of-the-art facilities in Canada, New Zealand, and Bhutan. Announced at the Acronis Global Cyber Summit 2020, the expansion ensures that the full range of Acronis Cyber Protection Solutions will be available to partners and organizations around the world, which is critical now that an estimated two-thirds of employees work remotely and rely on cloud-based services.  Services data centers The rise of edge computing around the world means more data is now created and used away from company networks" The announcement also revealed Acronis’ plan to add an additional 100 micro data centers to its global network, which already includes collocated and managed services data centers in the U.S., the U.K., Switzerland, France, Germany, Japan, Australia, and Singapore. Another new data center in Vancouver, Canada was announced earlier this month. “The rise of edge computing around the world means more data is now created and used away from company networks,” said Serguei “SB” Beloussov, Founder and CEO of Acronis. Cloud data centers “Micro data centers enable the efficient deployment of edge computing, particularly in emerging markets. As part of Acronis’ Global-Local Strategy, this expansion allowing us to provide the local, cost-efficient, bandwidth efficient, and low latency cloud services our global partners demand. It demonstrates our commitment to offering the cloud-based services and cyber protection that partners and users need in today’s digital world.”  With Gartner forecasting that the worldwide market for cloud management and security services will continue growing more than 25% by 2022, and Technavio projecting that the global edge data center market will progress at a CAGR of almost 14% by 2024, the new cloud data centers announced will put Acronis in a strong position in both areas. Cloud-based cyber protection The expansion further enables Acronis to extend the reach of its cyber protection solutions “While reliance on cloud-based access to production data and controls has been increasing during the past several years, the pandemic accelerated its adoption worldwide among organizations,” notes Phil Goodwin, Research Director, IDC. “Developing a larger network of cloud data centers, especially in emerging markets, enables Acronis to cultivate new partners and customers who are actively seeking cloud-based data protection and security platforms and solutions.” The expansion further enables Acronis to extend the reach of its cyber protection solutions delivered through the Acronis Cyber Cloud platform, which empowers service providers to provide backup, disaster recovery, antimalware, secure workplace collaboration, and blockchain-based data authentication service - all through a single pane of glass. Data center network “Organizations across the globe rely on data in a way they never have before, which means they need IT providers like us to be ready with effective, affordable solutions,” said Martin Brought, President & CEO, Robson Communications. “Acronis understands what providers need to build our portfolio of services and keep clients protected - not just from the standpoint of the solutions they offer, but also how they price and deliver them. The expansion of their data center network will help a lot more service providers around the world keep their clients productive and protected.” Endpoint management tools Among the solutions service providers can access through the new data centers is Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud. Among the solutions service providers can access through the new data centers is Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud. This unique integration of backup, disaster recovery, next-gen antimalware, cyber security, and endpoint management tools recently earned the 2020 New Product Innovation Award for Data Protection from Frost & Sullivan. All of Acronis solutions are designed to address the Five Vectors of Cyber Protection, ensuring the safety, accessibility, privacy, authenticity, and security (SAPAS) of an organization’s data, applications, and systems.  Cyber protection solutions Regardless of their size or geography, or whether they are collocated or managed services facilities, all Acronis data centers meet the highest standards of digital and physical security, and feature redundant power and environmental controls ensure constant (99.9%) monthly availability. Service providers interested in learning more about the global network of Acronis data centers or the full range of cyber protection solutions available via the Acronis Cyber Cloud are encouraged to contact the Acronis Partner Program team.

Quantum Corporation has announced new software with advanced features and capabilities for DXi backup appliances to significantly improve backup and restore system performance, as well as monitor systems remotely utilizing cloud-based analytics. The new DXi 4.1 software also integrates with Veeam Backup & Replication v10 and the new Fast Clone feature, to enable ultra-fast synthetic full backups in Veeam environments for more efficient use of resources for large enterprises. Improved synthetic full backup performance The combination of Quantum DXi software and Veeam Fast Clone can cut the time to create a synthetic full backup Employing an incremental backup strategy is increasingly common. However, creating synthetic full backups on a backup appliance can be taxing on the system performance and on the network. To address this issue Quantum DXi 4.1 software leverages Veeam Backup & Replication v10 Fast Clone technology to accelerate synthetic full backup performance.  Fast Clone references existing data blocks on volumes instead of copying data blocks between files, copying those blocks only when files are modified. The result is faster creation of synthetic full backups, reduced disk space requirements, and a reduced load on storage devices. Based on results from Quantum testing and early customer deployments, the combination of Quantum DXi software and Veeam Fast Clone can cut the time to create a synthetic full backup for a large VM from hours to just minutes. Remotely monitor DXi system health Quantum DXi systems can now connect to Quantum’s Cloud-Based Analytics (CBA) software, a cloud-based services tool that enables end-to-end integrated communication between Quantum systems and Quantum product and service experts. CBA software allows administrators to monitor system health remotely via a secure cloud-based portal. When Quantum CBA agents are enabled on DXi backup systems, those systems send telemetry and log data to the Quantum CBA software, providing administrators with a central portal they can use to monitor and track system and environment health and statistics, providing a proactive view into backup environments. Other DXi software enhancements DXi 4.1 software includes other new software enhancements: Support for Veritas NetBackup Targeted Automatic Image Replication (AIR) with a new OST Targeted AIR Plug-In Improved replication fan-in capabilities – up to 50:1 fan in for DXi9000 systems, and up to 30:1 fan-in for DXi4800 systems DXi Accent path optimization to reduce network loads More flexible system memory configurations Support for additional virtual tape drives (VTDs) for VTL DXi4800 Availability DXi 4.1 software is available in the market as a no-charge upgrade for any DXi4800 and DXi9000 backup appliance DXi 4.1 software is available in the market as a no-charge upgrade for any DXi4800 and DXi9000 backup appliance. Phil Goodwin, Research Director, Infrastructure Systems, Platforms and Technologies Group, IDC said, “Traditional backup and recovery software remains strong, even as organizations add cloud-based backup to their data protection strategies. The combination of a Quantum DXi appliance and Veeam V10 shows great potential for enterprises seeking to protect their vital hybrid-cloud environments. Faster synthetic full backups enabled by this release means that organizations can backup more often, thereby reducing the risk of data loss and delivering a better RPO.” Protecting vital Enterprise data David Harvey, Vice President of Strategic Alliances, Veeam said, “Quantum DXi continues to develop as a valued tool for protecting vital Enterprise data. The combination of Veeam Backup & Replication v10 and Quantum DXi 4.1 software really moves data protection a step forward with a simple, flexible, and reliable solution for hybrid-cloud environments.” Bruno Hald, General Manager, Secondary Storage, Quantum Corporation said, “Backup efficiency continues to be a vital priority for Enterprises seeking to make the most of their datacenter resources while protecting increasingly distributed environments. These significant new software feature enhancements optimize performance with bandwidth and interface improvements, enabling DXi appliances to integrate much more tightly with backup applications.”