Category Archives: Asigra

Asigra Cloud Backup Appliance Offers Distributed Enterprise Data Recovery

Asigra Inc. has announced volume shipping of the company’s Cloud Backup Connector Appliance. The Asigra Cloud Backup Connector Appliance leverages the Cisco ISR G2 router and UCS E-Series server blade and includes the latest version of Asigra Cloud Backup software. The appliance provides onsite backup data storage and the ability to replicate to external cloud service providers at the user’s discretion for both local and remote recovery.

For globally distributed mid-market and enterprise organizations with multiple branch offices, the Asigra Cloud Connector provides more efficient use of storage and networking resources. The appliance provides a new and innovative way to bring flexible end-to-end enterprise-class data recovery to organizations. The Cloud Backup Connector appliance ensures that branch-office users receive LAN-like performance from their cloud backup application and that data is highly available and handled in a secure manner. The improved linkage of the network with Asigra cloud-enabled services contributes to increased performance and enhanced end-user experience.

Our network had become increasingly more complex, storage was growing and our previous backup solution was struggling to keep pace,” said Simon Johnson, Finance Director at Opus Trust. By implementing the Cloud Connector Backup Appliance powered by Asigra, we simplified the infrastructure and improved the levels of data protection and recovery across all of our network and applications. We now have local backup to disk, automated offsite backup and a complete IT DR plan through the OnDemand Recovery service, implemented by Project Vision.”

Our switch to the Cloud Backup Connector Appliance helped the company to achieve several business benefits,” said David Van Eck, Head of IT at L.K. Bennett. “Through a centralized online monitoring portal made available by our service provider, Backup Technology Ltd., we receive guaranteed backup and recovery for all of our data systems as a professional and fully managed service. The backup forms the basis for our enterprise-wide data recovery solution, which is essential to L.K. Bennett.”

The Cloud Backup Connector Appliance features:

  • Asigra Cloud Backup v12.2 pre-installed for plug-and-play mass deployment and agentless protection of all computing environments
  • The ability to perform standalone local backup and/or connect to the service provider of choice for offsite recovery
  • End-to-end data protection of storage, servers, desktops, laptops and mobile devices (tablets and smartphones)
  • High-performance data recovery across physical, virtual and cloud operating environments
  • Autonomic healing to ensure data integrity/recoverability
  • Enterprise-class security for regulated industries such as healthcare, financial services and government with FIPS 140-2 certification
  • 2TB internal storage standard which scales to 10TB per appliance to store compressed, de-duplicated data for local recovery
  • Capability to leverage external cloud service providers for offsite data recovery
  • Connectivity: Three integrated 10/100/1000 Ethernet ports with 1 port capable of RJ-45 or SFP connectivity, one service module slot, three onboard digital signal processor slots and one internal service module for application services

Rationalize Your IT Budget with Recovery-Based Pricing

 

By Eran Farajun, Executive Vice President, Asigra

If you make software purchasing decisions or influence your company’s data and recovery solutions, there are some recent studies you should know about.

The Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) recently surveyed economic buyers, technical buyers, and financial buyers about their data-growth expectations, cost pressures, pricing preferences, and recovery rates. They discovered:

  • – 3 out of 4 respondents expect data to grow at a rate of around 20% a year.
  • – 2 out of 3 respondents felt “some” or “strong” pressure” to reduce IT spend.
  • – Financial buyers were the most likely group to expect a “substantial increase” in backup & recovery costs over the next 5 yrs.

With these data points in mind, let’s now look at another report by Forrester Research: Demand Pricing That Matches Business Value—The Radical Sourcing Trend for 2013. In this report, Duncan Jones explains why the traditional pricing models currently dominating the software market are “obsolete” and “no longer match products’ cost to the business value they deliver.”

 

Jones notes that technology market shifts such as cloud and big data affect the way that IT managers and other purchasers buy software. He goes on to recommend that software buyers demand new pricing models that better match business value.

 

Performance-based pricing models continue to surface in the IT industry, such as recovery-based pricing for backup and recovery users: Recovery-based pricing can be categorized as a performance- or behaviorally driven pricing model that puts greater cost controls in the hands of the user. That’s because this approach has been decoupled from the number of machines protected or the capacity of data to protect. Instead, pricing is connected with the volume of data actually recovered.

 

Recovery-based pricing allows users to pay for what they are purchasing the solution to do – recover their data. It also helps software purchasers rationalize their IT budget for data and recovery because they will be billed for data that is recovered. This model aligns with a recovery metric, no longer solely based on the backup of data. If a company’s recovery needs are less, then users will pay less for these services. What’s more, it offers a fixed cost of backup with a variable cost for recovery based on the amount of data recovered on an annual basis.  

Eran Farajun is the executive vice president for Asigra. The company can be reached at partners@asigra.com or 416-736-8111.