TORONTO – July 9th, 2012 – Asigra Inc., a leading Cloud Backup, Recovery and Restore (BURR) software provider since 1986, today announced that it has been recognized by Gartner, Inc. in the 2012 Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Backup and Recovery Software. Asigra’s inclusion was based on evaluation of the company’s ability to execute and completeness of vision.
According to the report, “Organizations worldwide are seeking ways to easily, quickly and cost-effectively ensure that their data is appropriately protected. Organizations are also voicing the opinion that backup needs to improve a lot, not just a little. The rising frustration with backup implies that the data protection approaches of the past may no longer suffice in meeting current, much less future, recovery requirements. As such, companies are willing to adopt new technologies and products from new vendors, and have shown an increased willingness to switch backup and recovery providers to better meet their increasing service levels.”
Over the past year, Asigra has seen considerable traction driven by SMB and enterprise customer deployments and supported by the company’s large eco-system of cloud service providers (CSPs), web hosting and managed service providers (MSPs) and value added resellers (VARs).
“Energy XXI has relied on Backup Technology, powered by Asigra, to backup and recover our information for years,” said Andrew Schaefer, IT Director, Energy XXI, an independent oil and natural gas exploration and production company. “It comes as no surprise to us that Asigra has been chosen for Gartner’s Magic Quadrant. Until we discovered Asigra, we hadn’t used a backup system as reliable or feature rich.”
“Asigra being positioned on the Gartner Magic Quadrant in 2012 further affirms what we have believed for years,” said Mike Colesante, Director of North American Operations, Backup Technology Limited. “Asigra offers the most comprehensive backup and recovery solution on the market and it’s the one we trust to offer to our clients in order to keep their data safe.”
Over the past 12 months, Asigra has achieved significant business milestones, initiated new partner programs, and launched product enhancements to support increasing demand driven by cloud-based infrastructure, virtualized operating environments and data-intensive applications. Highlights include:
##550,000 Customer Site Deployment Milestone – Over half a million global installations, a 37% increase since June 2011 shows the growing adoption of public, private and hybrid cloud backup as businesses replace time consuming, manually intensive, insecure and unreliable tape-based data protection.
##Asigra Cloud Backup Technical Certification Program – The industry’s first tiered cloud backup certification program to be offered by a cloud backup software provider. The new program improves the industry by validating individuals with a certified level of technical competency.
##Asigra Cloud Backup Partner Summit – Asigra produced its 5th annual Cloud Backup Partner Summit, the only cloud backup event of its kind, focused on providing attendees with the opportunity to network with their peers, discuss strategies on how to grow their cloud backup and recovery businesses by embracing marketing best practices and proven sales methodologies to enhance customer acquisition, retention and service.
##2011 Product of the Year Gold Winner – Recognized by SearchStorage.com and Storage Magazine as the 2011 Product of the Year Gold Winner for backup and recovery.
##Expansion of Cloud Backup Training Program – Training has been expanded to enhance the customer experience, including more emphases on a hand-on approach versus theoretical instruction. North American training facilities, hosted by CoreVault, have also been added to streamline education and certification processes. As an authorized Asigra Training Partner, CoreVault’s training facility provides an accelerated learning environment with hands-on technology instruction by advisers with real-world operational experience. The centrally located training center will expedite Asigra partner readiness and reduce training costs. Partners now have the choice of attending training in the U.S., Canada and the U.K. The e-Learning systems for end users and managed service providers have also been expanded, with the added opportunity for partners to offer co-branded training material as part of their service offering to their customers. The new e-learning enhancements include self-paced learning modules and the ability to schedule the course work around other commitments.
##End-to-end data protection – v11.2 features enhanced support for iOS 5 and Android 4.0 operating systems for complete protection of endpoint devices such as tablets and smartphones to the data center.
##Increased support for virtualized operating environments – Support for VMware 5.0 with 3X performance improvement, Hyper-V clustering and Xenserver 6.0.
##Streamlined customer acquisition and retention – Customer on-boarding, self-service administration and on-demand web portal reports.
##Centralized management and expanded support for mixed environments – Asigra DS-NOC delivers single pane-of-glass management for mixed public, private and hybrid cloud environments.
##Simplified wholesale and white-label branding options – Ability to re-brand end-customer and service provider interfaces for white-labeling makes it easy for large service providers to offer a wholesale and resale solution to their channel partners.
##Deeper Integration with NetApp – Asigra software leverages native NetApp features at both the core and edge of the cloud to:
Speed and simplify data backup/capture at the customer site (edge of cloud)
Speed and simplify restoration at the end-customer site
Improve scalability and performance of core backup/restore processing
Speed replication to backup archives, cloud storage, and remote disaster recovery site(s)
In addition to software enhancements, expanded training capabilities and marketing support for the company’s channel, the company has strengthened relationships with its key technology partners, including NetApp, HP and Intel. The company has also increased its footprint globally with new service providers in Asia Pacific and China.
“We are again very pleased with our placement in the Gartner Magic Quadrant. The cloud backup space has continued to grow at an impressive rate as business customers of every size require the ability to recover data from every system and device regardless of operating environment or hardware platform. Asigra provides an inclusive solution that delivers on this requirement to ensure business continuity,” said David Farajun, CEO, Asigra. “The rising tide of Asigra customers benefitting from cloud-based recovery is a direct reflection of the quality of our partner ecosystem as we enable both our partners and their clients with superior technology and support.”
About the Magic Quadrant
Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
About Asigra
Asigra is the leading cloud computing software vendor focused on backup, recovery and restoration with more than 550,000 global installations. Asigra Cloud Backup™ transforms the way businesses manage and protect their data by delivering seamless end-to-end data protection that efficiently scales and easily adapts to any IT environment. With more than 26 years of experience as backup/recovery pioneers, Asigra manages one of the largest business-class backup service provider ecosystems in the world who power their cloud backup services using Asigra technology and provide hands-on local service. Asigra is recognized by leading analyst groups as a top cloud storage vendor. Asigra Cloud Backup™ was recently named “Product of the Year” by Storage Magazine and Asigra was recently awarded a 5-Star rating in the CRN Magazine’s 2012 Partner Program Guide, named a CRN 2012 Channel Chief, and also named a Best Channel Partner for 2012 by Business Solutions Magazine. Asigra is headquartered in Toronto, Canada, with offices globally. For more information, visit www.asigra.com
Asigra and the Asigra logo are trademarks of Asigra Inc. All other brand and product names are, or may be, trademarks of their respective owners.
Press Release Source – July 9, 2012