Axcient Puts SMB Data Protection in the Cloud

As data protection moves up the list of security priorities and cloud-based solutions make further gains in the small to medium-size business (SMB) market, Mountain View, Calif.-based Axcient wants midmarket companies to know data protection and software as a service go hand-in-hand.

The company announced the availability of a hybrid on-premise and cloud data protection and business continuity service, a pay-as-you-grow approach that includes an on-premise data backup and replication appliance with offsite cloud storage and services that the company says delivers a secure and cost-effective way for SMBs to ensure rapid data recovery and uptime.

"The most important thing to remember is that backup is about recovery," said company CEO Justin Moore. "Online backup is an important component because it delivers disaster recovery and compliant archiving, but for fast recovery you must have the backup data stored locally."

Moore said Axcient offers the best aspects of an onsite solution plus the best aspects of an online solution as a single integrated service. The service will be sold exclusively through the IT solution provider channel and has been built from the ground up to serve SMB customers with anywhere from 1 to 500 workstations or servers and 10 gigabytes to 10 terabytes of data.

"Axcient's service has been in development for the past two years, with our team laser-focused on solving the data protection challenges of the SMB market and the outsourced IT professionals who serve it," Moore said. "We realized early on that businesses need one comprehensive service that can handle backup, recovery, archiving and disaster recovery -- without having to cobble together various vendors' products."

The Axcient Web-based management platform requires no software installation and is accessible by authorized administrators from any location. Additionally, the computing related to data protection occurs on the Axcient on-premise appliance, which the company said results in little impact on system performance in customers' production environments.

For total information security, data is encrypted on the on-premise appliances, transferred offsite through an encrypted tunnel, and encrypted when at rest at Axcient's data centers. Customers can also restore a whole volume to its original location or select a version of a file folder and restore it to a chosen location.

Brad Nisbet, program manager, storage and data management services, at analyst firm IDC said he believes as business organizations continue to generate vast amounts of data and seek optimum methods to store and protect them, the growth of storage capacities delivered through storage-as-a-service offerings will outpace traditional storage architectures.

"Given Axcient's hybrid model and comprehensive service-based approach to data protection and business continuity, the company is solving serious end user pain by drastically reducing downtime, simplifying management of explosive data growth, and eliminating capital expenditures," Nisbet said.

Axcient also announced it raised $6 million in first round funding from investors Allegis Capital and Peninsula Ventures. The company says the funding will be used to further enhance Axcient's platform, grow operations, expand sales and marketing initiatives, and better serve the customer base.

Allegis managing director Pete Bodine says Axcient's technology has the potential to seriously disrupt the SMB data backup and recovery market. "In today's economy, outsourced IT professionals need to increase their revenue per customer while reducing investments in infrastructure," he said "Axcient offers one of the most compelling ways to do that. We are very impressed with Axcient's technology solution and the team behind it, and that's why we invested in the company."