Network Backup Vendor Arkeia Software Unveils MSP Program

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Arkeia Software is not a newbie to the backup market. Founded in 1996, the San Diego-based company’s development happens in Silicon Valley and Paris. The company has experienced new customer growth of 89 percent between 2010 and 2011, CEO Bill Evans told MSPmentor.

Version 9.9 of the Arkeia Network Backup Suite for MSPs (and version 10, available this summer) is all about “cloud seeding and feeding,” Evans said – being able to transfer data to the cloud on magnetic media (seeding) to complement what is sent over the LAN (feeding). Arkeia pitches its “seeding and feeding” approach as the answer to overcome the mid-market’s challenge of minimizing costs of expensive WAN bandwidth.”

Evans says there’s a cross over in terms of cost when it comes to the “tapes on trucks” versus “over the wire” cost of backups. For large organizations backing up large volumes of data, tapes on trucks has made sense cost-wise. They can afford the initial set up and increasing the data backed up doesn’t add much cost to the equation. But smaller companies haven’t found the initial set up and ongoing cost of tapes on trucks to be cost effective. However, as they grow and their backup needs grow they may find the cost of bandwidth to backup their growing volumes of data to be prohibitive.

Evans says that’s why Arkeia has introduced its hybrid solution. The hybrid solution combines an initial back up on magnetic media such as hard disk drives that are then shipped overnight to an offsite cloud hosted by the MSP. Incremental backups are performed nightly thereafter.

The solution is designed to resolve the limitations of last-mile bandwidth by using data deduplication and 97 percent compression ratios. Arkeia says the solution shortens the backup window by 50 percent.

Arkeia offers the solution in both perpetual and subscription models. Perpetual pricing is offered at from $2,500 to $1,250 per terabyte.

Evans believes MSPs will find the subscription licensing more attractive, however, which is offered at about $800 per year or $60 per month for a terabyte of storage.