By Mark Brunelli

Carbonite this week unveiled its brand-new, all-in-one E2 hybrid backup solution—and that's exciting news for IT services and solutions providers who want to close more backup and recovery deals. The completely preconfigured E2 hybrid backup solution is powered by EVault technology, it's easy to set up and manage, and it supports a broad range of platforms. That's why it's the right choice for your small and midsize business clients.

I recently caught up with Jessica Couto, Carbonite's Vice President of U.S Channel Sales & Marketing, and Tom Powers, Carbonite's Senior Program Manager, to record a Carbonite Podcast and discuss the amazing features and capabilities of E2. Here are some excerpts from that conversation:

Let's start with the basics: What is the E2 hybrid backup solution from Carbonite?

Tom Powers: The E2 Hybrid backup solution is what we consider to be the best all-in-one hybrid backup solution available to small businesses, and we're extremely excited about it. As many people listening to the podcast may know, we purchased EVault about 10 months ago, and EVault has a very strong record of enterprise-grade technology. Carbonite is very well known for offering very simple, consumer-based software that is very easy to use. We spent the last 10 months working with a very talented engineering team to build the best of both worlds. With E2, we're offering enterprise-grade software with a very strong, high-horsepower back end that is very easy to set up. It's basically everything a small business needs to deploy a comprehensive backup and disaster recovery strategy for virtually every environment. It offers a broad range of platform, and, again, the offering model is so simple and so easy, we think it's going to be a great solution for a lot of customers.

Why is E2 the right choice for channel partners who want to close more backup and recovery deals?

Jessica Couto: Great question. And to back up what Tom was just saying: Our partners have been looking for better quality and higher availability for their customers in terms of backup. And the fact that our team could actually bring high-quality technology into a small box is very exciting for us and for our partners, and so our partners are going to be looking for opportunities where they have customers with a different operating system server that they need to back up. For example, our previous versions would back up Windows. But now, as Tom mentioned, we back up multiple different operating systems or platforms. That means more reach and more opportunities for our partners. We also have the ability now to help our partners solve a problem for their customers that are looking for a hybrid solution. E2 offers great opportunities for partners to find net new customers or to solve problems they haven't been able to address.

Listen to this quick podcast to learn more about the E2 hybrid backup solution and how it can help you close more disaster recovery deals:

E2 is preconfigured. What does that mean for partners when it comes to installation and setup?

Powers: Obviously, this is a cloud backup solution. But there is also a nice micro tower appliance that's available with this so we can provide on-premise backup. That's where the word hybrid comes from. When the customer completes their order, within three to seven business days they're going to get a box with the appliance in it. All they have to do is plug in the power, plug in an Ethernet, and the appliance will self-configure with the EVault cloud. And then, all they have to do is log into the EVault portal, which by the way is a complete remote management portal. You can remotely manage customer endpoints from anywhere in the world and configure the backup with one click of a button.

Can you talk a little bit about E2's hardware-as-a-service model?

Couto: We're getting a lot of valuable feedback from our partners asking for help in addressing the needs of their customers, and so a lot of partners are moving to this initiative of hardware as a service, where there's no initial investment on behalf of the partner or the customer, so it's very helpful for budget-conscious small customers. Hardware-as-a-service also means that if anything happens to the hardware, we'll replace it. We'll also swap it out after a couple of years of use when the newer model comes out. In a sense, you're borrowing or leasing that hardware until you're done using it. There's no initial upfront costs, no initial upfront investment, but they get that functionality and technology at their fingertips. So we're finding that this is going to really provide a fantastic service to our partners that we haven’t been able to offer until now.

What does Carbonite mean when it refers to E2's protected footprint pricing model?

Powers: In addition to the simple hardware-as-a-service model, the offering model is really simple. The pricing is based on half a terabyte and 1 terabyte, and that's protected footprint. And so that is basically what is on the customer's server locally, and you're guaranteed a year of backups for what we're provisioning for you. So whether you purchase half a terabyte or 1 terabyte, you will have a year of backups. You don't have to worry about what hits our cloud, and you don't have to worry about whether your configurations need to be specialized to support your model. It's preconfigured, auto-configured, one year of backups based on what's locally there.

If I'm an IT services and solutions provider who wants to begin selling Carbonite's E2 hybrid backup solution to my small-business clients, what should I do?

Powers: First of all, make sure you're a Carbonite Partner and that you're signed up with us and that you can log in to the Carbonite Partner Portal and make purchases. So, that's the first step. But if you're interested in learning more, you can call our Partner Sales Team at 877-391-4759.

Learn more about Carbonite's E2 hybrid backup solution today!

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