CharTec Launches Enterprise HaaS BDR Appliance for MSPs

CharTec specializes in hardware-as-a-service — so it’s no surprise that when they decided to build their own cloud-enabled enterprise-grade backup and disaster recovery (BDR) appliance, they decided to offer it under a monthly subscription model with no money down. CharTec says it’s designed to make BDR more appealing to the midmarket, where this kind of solution can be expensive and complex to deploy. Here’s the skinny.

The underlying technology, says CharTec CEO Alex Rogers, is to give MSPs a deep level of visibility into the backup chain. The CharTec BDR appliances will perform onsite backups regularly, and push data into the cloud automatically, as you’d expect, but they’ll also perform test virtualizations of backed-up servers overnight and alert the administrator if anything’s wrong – Rogers says it eliminates a lot of unpleasant surprises for MSPs.

And speaking of virtualizations, CharTec BDR enables total network virtualization from the cloud in the event of total site loss, enhancing business continuity. If it’s just one server that goes down, the appliance can virtualize it maximizing uptime. And ten hours of virtualization lab time a month are included with the HaaS subscription to enable technicians to work on servers in the cloud.

Subscriptions start at $149/month (for the basic CharTec BDR 100 appliance) and go to $499/month (for the 18GB of RAM, five 1.5 terabyte hard drive-packing BDR 500). And, Rogers says, since CharTec sees BDR as a great “foot-in-the-door” offering for managed services providers, you don’t even have to enroll in their reseller program to offer it to customers at channel rates.

Competitive Market

Of course, CharTec isn’t alone in the BDR market. Zenith Infotech, for one, is well-known within the managed services market for its BDR solutions. And Hewlett-Packard now bundles Level Platforms‘ remote monitoring and management software on a storage appliance.

The competitive landscape also is evolving. You may recall that ConnectWise Capital invested in CharTec and LabTech Software in early 2010. Fast forward to the present, and LabTech seems to be targeting competitive opportunities against Kaseya. And if CharTec’s BDR solution works as advertised, it could wind up competing against Zenith Infotech.

Additional reporting by Joe Panettieri. Sign up for MSPmentor’s weekly Enewsletter, Webcasts and Resource Center. And follow us via RSS, Facebook, Identi.ca; and Twitter. Plus, check out more MSP voices at www.MSPtweet.com.