Axcient Upgrades Storage Cloud; Boosts Performance and Cuts Price

Axcient, the cloud storage provider, has overhauled its platform to boost performance by up to 4X while reducing costs by about 50 percent. New customer and partner deployments will benefit immediately. Existing deployments will be migrated gradually to the new architecture.

“We’re passing our own savings onto partners,” said CEO Justin Moore. “This [upgrade] is a pretty significant shift in terms of the back-end. It’s a rare opportunity for us to solve for two different use cases: Archive date, where you’re writing frequently but reading rarely, and then using the same platform for spinning up systems very quickly.”

Axcient has remained in growth mode and recently landed on the Inc. 5000 list. But after a marketing-heavy 2012, the company has gone about its business a bit more quietly in 2013. In addition to the platform upgrade, Axcient has made multiple executive level moves over the past year — essentially hiring an executive team that has experience with second- and third-stage businesses and IPOs.

Within the MSP market, Axcient has ranked among the top BDR (backup and disaster recovery) players. But the market seems poised for consolidation since there might be too many vendors chasing too few MSPs. Axcient believes it can control its own destiny because the company controls all of its software and cloud architecture — rather than licensing or OEMing any technology components, which some industry rivals have done. Plus, the company has expanded its channel strategy to include VARs.

Near term, Axcient is built for growth rather generating profits — a common strategy in Silicon Valley. But even as Axcient cuts prices, Moore says the company can march toward profitability because Axcient’s own cost of goods (i.e., the cost to deliver the service) will drop on the new platform. “We’re getting economies of scale and we’ll hit commodity price points that are below public cloud prices.”

Moore says the upgraded service starts at about $49 per server per month. Put that up against traditional on-premises platforms and they can’t compete, he insists.

The upgraded Axcient service will roll out in the U.S. first, followed by Canada. The upgrade is expected to reach international markets early next year.

Ironically, the Axcient upgrades surface the same day that rival Datto kicks off its first-ever partner summit in Washington, D.C.