by, Pavan Vyas, Product Marketing Manager, Asigra Inc

 

Making the right choice for cloud backup delivery platform – Why is it important?

 

When you are deciding to expand your practice to include backup and recovery services, the first and most important decision you face is choosing the right cloud backup platform.

 

This single decision governs the entire spectrum of possibilities related to the business – the service options that you can provide your customers, flexibility in supporting multiple sites and deployment models, competitive pricing options, and the support you can expect in promoting your services to the marketplace.  

 

This may seem like an exaggerated claim to you. However, having worked with service providers for over 26 years now in a 100% channel focused model and having supported them in building their businesses, we at Asigra can assure you that this is very much the case.

 

Your ability to support your customers’ backup and recovery needs, providing them the assurance that you can, not just backup all their enterprise data across their various devices, data centers and operating platforms, but can also recover the data in the event that they need it, is totally dependent on the platform that you choose. You also need to consider that your   customers will want the flexibility of different cloud deployment models – public, private or hybrid based on the changing needs of their business.  One size fits all may not be the best approach so you will want to have this flexibility.  Also, you will want to be able to support multitenant operations, set and achieve SLAs, and support varied operating platforms, therefore, the underlying platform needs to provide you with the flexibility and scalability to do so.

 

Your choice of cloud backup platform will also dictate the resources that you will need, the investments that you will need to make and the pricing that you can command for your services. All of these considerations will have a direct impact on the returns that you can expect on your investments and the profitability that you can enjoy by extending cloud backup and recovery services to existing and new customers. Finally and most importantly, you also need support beyond just technology capability to get to market quickly and easily with this new offering – and it is important for you to have the support of a larger marketing and business partnership to help you promote and grow your business.  A good platform provider will look to support you with extensive marketing and sales resources.

 

In short, 4 key factors to consider while choosing a cloud backup platform are:

1. The platform needs to offer flexibility and scalability by offering support for multiple operating systems, databases, devices and hardware environments.
2. The ability to offer different cloud deployment models – public, private and hybrid.
3. A vendor who wants to be your business partner providing extensive sales and marketing resources.
4. A vendor that lets you set your own margins.

 

This blog post just scratches the surface of what the decision entails and what you should be looking for. We know that you will want to know a lot more and may have a number of additional questions. To help you with that process, we have put together a resource for you on some of the things that you should look for and the questions that you should ask of your cloud platform provider. Download the free guide titled “How to choose a cloud backup delivery platform”.