Acronis has announced Acronis Backup 12, a new solution that boasts of the ability to backup and protect company data for hybrid cloud IT environments – whether it resides in the cloud, on-premises, across virtual and physical systems, in remote systems, and on mobile devices.
Backup solutions previously released by the company, such as Acronis Backup 11.7 and Acronis Backup Cloud, were disparate. Each product could perform backups for data either on-premise or in the cloud, but not both. The newly released backup product touts the ability for customers to use the product on-premise and transition to the cloud with the same solution.
The new solution targets both SMBs and enterprise customers. Current users of the company’s backup solutions include SingTel and Singapore Power.
Complete control of data
Acronis Backup 12 touts the ability to give businesses complete control over the location of their data, systems, and backups. It aims to let IT managers always know where their company data is located and who has access to it, even when stored in the cloud.
In the event of data loss, Acronis Backup 12 provides businesses with a range of recovery options, including file, email, and database recovery; system recovery, including bare-metal recovery, active restore, instant restore, and vmFlashBack; cloud disaster recovery; and physical data shipment. The solution also enables IT Managers to migrate data, applications and systems to any platforms and dissimilar hardware systems.
Data protection support is provided for Microsoft infrastructure and applications, including Microsoft Exchange, Office365, SharePoint, Active Directory, Windows Server, Windows PC, Hyper-V, Azure, as well as Azure Stack upon its release to the market. Acronis Backup 12 is also the first commercially available solution to support the upcoming release of Microsoft Windows Server 2016, including Hyper-V with resilient change tracking (RCT).
An advanced version of Acronis Backup 12, which promises functions tailored to the needs of large enterprises, is slated for release in August
Purported simplicity
“Simplicity is the key interest to us, and after testing Acronis Backup 12, it has delivered,” said Bhavin Solgama, Managing Director at Qilnix. “Both the installation and the backup management process are very easy, even to a new user. And the unified management console provides a great snapshot of what is going on at any point in time.”
“Managed IT security and data protection services are a must for any business using technology and leveraging data to deliver an exceptional customer experience,” said Bill Brandel, executive director, Advanced Solutions, Ingram Micro. “Acronis’ new Backup 12 enables channel partners to capitalize on the market’s need for complete protection and deliver a managed backup solution that will support virtual, on premise or hybrid environments.”
Customer feedback
“In our competitive environment it is important to use the latest software to protect all of our technical information. The release of Acronis Backup 12 is welcomed by Scuderia Toro Rosso because it provides the high level of data protection and flexibility that we need,” said Raffaele Boschetti, Head of IT for the Scuderia Toro Rosso Formula 1 Racing Team. “We can’t wait to start working with Acronis on adopting their data protection products within our factory and race team. I am sure we will both benefit from this technical cooperation and it will help our team to continue moving forward.”
“As more businesses are migrating to the Cloud platform, Acronis have opened up new business opportunities to backup Microsoft Azure and Amazon EC2,” said Ang Wee Lee, Director of Enterprise Product Marketing, Innovix Distribution”
Cloud and Blockchain investments
According to Steve Goh, VP for APAC & Emerging Markets at Acronis, the company has invested a significant amount of resources into research and development for cloud environments. The cloud currently accounts for some 20% of the company’s revenue, with this figure set to increase significantly by year-end.
The company’s current products include Acronis Backup Cloud, Acronis Monitor, Acronis Storage, Acronis Notary. All are based on the company’s new hybrid cloud architecture to support data protection.
Acronis Backup Cloud has been built to easily fit within service provider environments with a comprehensive, yet simple, complete, and cost-effective hybrid backup and recovery solution that solves their customers’ data protection problems.
Acronis Monitoring Service enables IT managers to monitor servers, networks, applications, and web sites with ease to identify performance problems, and make smarter IT decisions.
Acronis Storage provides software-defined storage that supports any type and volume of data with reliable, resilient, self-healing features, enabling service providers to use cost-efficient, commodity hardware.
Finally, Acronis Notary aims to deliver ‘tamper-proof’ data storage that leverages Blockchain to ensure data authenticity, privacy and control. Acronis will apply Blockchain technology based on the Ethereum platform to its solutions, which aims to provide a record of digital events distributed across different participants or entities, and opens up a broad range of new data protection use cases for businesses worldwide.
With Blockchain, data and transactions can only be updated by rules of consensus between participants in the system, and when new data is entered, it can never be erased. Acronis solutions leveraging Blockchain technology are scheduled to be available in October.
“Data is the lifeline of today’s digital businesses – without it your company will not survive,” said Serguei Beloussov, co-founder and CEO at Acronis. “With Acronis Backup 12, businesses get the complete protection required in this new digital world with the ability to control their data no matter where it resides combined with the power to get it back faster than ever before in the event of a loss or an outside attack.”