Acronis BaaS Offers Private Cloud or Local Option to Partners

Acronis this week released a new backup-as-a-service (BaaS) offering for services providers and value-added resellers (VARs). The new offering gives channel partners more than one option, either placing customer data in a private cloud or keeping it local. Acronis believes this approach will make the offering stand out.

"We are not talking about cloud solutions," Acronis Cloud Business General Manager Rene Oldenbeuving, who joined the company seven months ago to build the company's cloud unit, told MSPmentor. "We are talking talking about a data protection solution."

Oldenbeuving said forcing customers to choose between cloud or local backup will take away the efficiency of a backup solution, since the customer would then need two backup solutions.

As of now, the offering does not provide partners with the option to back up customer data through a public cloud provider like Amazon (AMZN).

"That's certainly something we're working on," he said. "It's a very logical step to sort of expand the options that we have there."

Oldenbeuving could not disclose the exact time frame of when partners will be able to leverage public cloud providers.

Before this BaaS offering, Acronis customers would buy technology from the company, then the channel would fulfill orders, Oldenbeuving told MSPmentor.

"The difference is that we are now really partnering with the services provider," he said. "They use our portal to sell to the end customer, but they get into a commitment with us to do that."

To avoid additional restrictions on services providers and VARs, the Service Provider License Agreement (SPLA) between Acronis and the partner requires no minimum revenue commitments or minimum term, the company said.

Acronis said it provide partners with training, marketing and go-to-market support, which will include webinars, live events and more.

"We are highly, highly focused on getting those partners involved and getting them up-to-speed with knowledge," Oldenbeuving said.

He added that Acronis will not make a dollar of revenue at all if partners cannot use or sell Acronis technology.

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