Only all-in-one solutions will survive in the cloud

Users and business digital footprint have expanded beyond the PC. Today they are looking for an all-in-one solution that they can trust and which integrates all business applications from on-premise to the cloud; hybrid cloud, object storage, active archives, said John Zanni, Acronis CMO.

What are the key technologies that users today in the era of cloud computing need?

The Acronis Cloud offering is based on Odin which is a best in class platform for service providers to automate different workloads for hosters, telcos, and SaaS ISVs, enabling the addition of intelligent software applications and efficient and cost-effective business processes with no extra staff required. Acronis is the first to market with an integrated data protection, disaster recovery and enterprise cloud file sync & share and cloud services solution with Odin. Its best in class management panel makes it ideal for Acronis’ partner channel to self-serve 90% of the tasks they need to accomplish with provisioning, managing, reporting and billing Acronis Cloud services.

Where is the position of Acronis in the field of backup, mobility, disaster recovery?

Acronis sets the standard for hybrid cloud data protection through its backup, disaster recovery, and secure file sync and shares solutions. Powered by the Acronis AnyData Engine and set apart by its image technology, Acronis delivers easy, complete and affordable data protection of all files, applications and operating systems across any environment—virtual, physical, cloud and mobile.

You will have seen from our recent launch of Acronis Backup 12 that Acronis is transforming data protection by converging cloud and on-premises backup into one world’s easiest and fastest offering (2X faster than our closest competitor, Veeam), including the console, protected workloads, and storage. With Acronis Backup 12, you can protect all your data that resides on-premises, in remote systems, in private and public clouds, and on mobile devices.

To help you better understand the Acronis Disaster Recovery Service solution, we’ve provided more insight on our offering within the context of the Gartner Magic Quadrant report - see it here! You’ll not only get the complete Gartner report, but you can also see why we believe Acronis is challenging the status quo in disaster recovery with innovative features like non-disruptive testing, automation, and a commitment to providing our customers the fastest recovery times possible should a man-made or natural disaster strike.

Acronis Disaster Recovery Service addresses the broadest spectrum of use cases on the market. There are some key features and benefits that are unique and best-of-breed, leveraging years of development and layers of technology - all of which should be closely looked at when comparing disaster recovery strategies and solutions.

Disaster recovery today is one of the key solutions that in Big Data era companies need. What kind of solution they need?

The increased pace and reliance on IT operations have also increased business demands to decrease RTO, or Recovery Time Objective (the time between the disaster and return to normal operations). According to an ESG BC/DR Survey 2015:

-           51% of “High Priority“ and 28% of “Normal“ applications have a downtime tolerance of less than one hour

-           35% of “High Priority“ and 40% of “Normal“ applications have a downtime tolerance between one and four hours

-           Only 14% of actual servers (overall) have a downtime tolerance of at least six hours

IT organizations find it more complicated to meet the target RTO, especially if using the in-house (DIY) Disaster Recovery Solutions. According to the same research:

-           Only 24% of VMs can be restarted in less than an hour ... average is over 3 hours

-           Only 29% of users can reconnect AFTER VM failover ... the average is nearly 4 hours

Businesses need solutions that provide aggressive RTOs, like 15 minutes, with guaranteed SLAs. They also need a solution that is cost-effective, and which provides a flexible range of options from replication to high availability with aggressive RTOs, to backup and cloud recovery, to deliver the disaster recovery at a price point applicable to the level of importance of the particular system. The third aspect required is a flexible solution that supports the existing hardware, software, operating systems, hypervisors, storage technologies, etc. Companies cannot afford to change the hardware to suit the needs of the disaster recovery solution.

When you compare European markets in data backup and data recovery, do you think that these fields will grow in the future?

Disaster Recovery as a Service represents tremendous market growth opportunity to the IT solution providers. According to Markets and Markets, the global DRaaS and cloud-based business continuity is forecasted to grow to $5.77 billion by 2018, at a CAGR of 55.2%. The major forces driving the market are factors such as high level of automation, dynamism, 24x7x365 support, secure storage and backup, location independence, virtualization, easy deployment, recovery, as well as management and control.

According to Technavio, the global cloud backup and recovery software market is predicted to grow at a CAGR of 13% from 2016-2020; Cloud Backup & Recovery a $5.2 billion Global opportunity by 2020.

According to the IDC WW Quarterly Cloud Infrastructure Tracker, IT infrastructure spending (server, disk storage, and Ethernet switch) for public and private cloud in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) grew by 17.6% on year to EUR1.3 billion (US$1.45 billion) in the first quarter of 2016.

The cloud-related share of total EMEA infrastructure expenditure on server, disk storage, and Ethernet switch grew by 4pp compared with last year, to more than 25.1% in the first quarter of 2016. In terms of storage capacity, cloud represented around 29.9% of total EMEA capacity in the first quarter of 2016, with a 6.1% decline over the same period a year before. Looking at the market in euros, EMEA in the first quarter of 2016 reported strong on-year user value growth (20.1%) in public and private cloud across servers, storage, and switches.

"IDC expects this market to reach a value of EUR10.7 billion by 2020, or 46.4% of total market expenditure, making it one of the strongest growth areas for the European infrastructure sector, compared with the expectation of a stagnant, if not declining, traditional market," said Kamil Gregor, research analyst, European Infrastructure Group, IDC.

In Western Europe, the growth in cloud infrastructure spending has been distributed nearly equally between enterprise storage and servers, with on-year growth of 12% and 16.6% respectively. The two types of technology currently account for about 42% and 45% of the total market.

An IDC study into the Western European storage software market for 2015, found that overall, the Western European storage software market delivered healthy 6.8% growth in 2015 to exceed the $3.7 billion mark. This was primarily driven by strong double-digit growth in the software-defined storage-controller software (SDS-CS) segment. Although it still accounts for a tiny portion of the overall market (5%), it outgrew all the other storage software segments by recording 26% YoY growth. Data protection and recovery software, which grew 9%, continues to hold the majority (38%) of the total storage software market in Europe.

Gartner states that by 2020, 30% of organizations will leverage backup for more than just operational recovery (e.g., disaster recovery, test/development, DevOps, etc.), up from less than 10% at the beginning of 2016; By 2018, 70% of business and application owners will have more self-service control over their data protection services, up from 30% today; and by 2020, over 40% of organizations will supplant long-term backup with archiving systems — up from 20% in 2015.

What will be next big thing in the future in IT in backup, disaster recovery?

Companies today have data in their local datacenter, in remote offices, in public clouds, in private clouds, and on mobile devices.  It is very challenging for IT to keep track of all this data and ensure that it is protected.  Many companies are using individual point products to protect their data in the different locations.  This increases the difficulty of ensuring that all data is protected.          Acronis is the first hybrid cloud data protection solution that provides a single web console to manage protection of data locally, in remote offices, in public clouds, in private clouds, and on mobile devices. Control over protection, location, deployment, policies, destination, and recovery location makes the solution flexible to meet company compliance and regulation needs.  Integration with Operational Support systems and Business Support Systems will ensure that data is automatically protected based on best-practice policies for specific application workloads and data types.

Do you think that companies in the EU pay enough attention to backup and disaster recovery for their business data - from ERP, CRM, BI and other IT solutions?

Data is a lifeline of all organizations. Like a human being that cannot survive more than 3 minutes without air, companies may not survive a data disaster - and 40% do not reopen for business following a disaster.

Backup and disaster recovery are an inseparable part of any sensible business, and not backing up your ERP is akin to not having the ERP at all. Yes, companies in EU pay very good attention to backup and disaster recovery - and 40% of more than 500,000 corporate customers of Acronis are located in Europe. Yet, more can be done through continuous education of the importance of business continuity to companies and organizations of all sizes. This is where media - online and traditional - plays a tremendous role, and we in Acronis, appreciate your effort to send the data protection message across.