Acronis today expanded its portfolio of offerings with the acquisition of nScaled, a provider of a disaster recovery-as-a-service (DRaaS) platform in the cloud. Acronis made the move amid a more nuanced data protection environment driven by the growth of cloud computing.

Rene Oldenbeuvig, general manager for cloud business at Acronis, says that while organizations still need to back up files and applications locally and into the cloud, in the event of a disaster they also want to be able to turn to a complete replica of their critical applications that they can access on demand in the cloud.

Spinning up a VM

The acquisition of nScaled adds that capability to the Acronis lineup by running a copy of an application on a virtual machine in the cloud that can be made accessible in a couple of hours. Going forward, the nScaled service will be integrated with AnyData Engine technology developed by Acronis. This engine enables customers to capture, store, recover, control, and access data in any environment and then move it to any storage device. MSPs currently using Acronis Backup-as-a-Service solution will now also gain access to the nScaled DRaaS platform.

The acquisition of nScaled is the second merger that Acronis has announced this month. The company acquired BackupAgent, which created agent software that allows service providers to more easily target different cloud platforms to backup files.

Tackling MSPs' greatest challenge

Oldenbeuvig says one of the biggest challenges that MSPs now face is the with the cost per gigabyte of storage on a public cloud service now approach pennies per gigabyte, the end customer doesn’t always appreciate the cost of delivering the software and services that actually go into the delivery of data protection services. It’s often not until they actually try to recover that data stored in a public cloud that they realize how complex and expensive the recovery process can actually be.

To better manage that process Oldenbeuvig suggests that MSPs establish zones of recovery at different price points. Most of the time the customer is looking to recover a file they were just using, which usually can be recovered from a local appliance. Other files can be backed up into the cloud and recovered at a more leisurely pace. DRaaS, meanwhile, provides a more immediate form of recovery that keeps the business operating in the event of a major disaster.

The ultimate goal, says Oldenbeuvig, is to deliver a data protection service that automates as much of the process as possible because any amount of data protection that depends on the actions of individuals working for the end customer is inherently flawed.