StorageCraft Technology Corp., the Draper, Utah-based maker of backup and disaster recovery solutions, has unveiled a new cloud-to-cloud backup solution that will enable MSPs to protect data stored in Office 365, Google Apps, Salesforce.com, and Box.
Named StorageCraft Cloud to Cloud, the new solution, which is currently in beta testing and will enter general availability late in this year’s third quarter or early in the fourth, was developed in response to feedback from channel pros looking for BDR options capable of backing up the increasing volumes of customer data housed in software-as-a-service solutions, according to StorageCraft senior product manager David McConkie.
“Based on our constant communication with our partners, this just seemed like definitely a direction that we needed to go,” he says.
StorageCraft points to the breadth of cloud solutions its new product supports as one of its key differentiators from other cloud-to-cloud BDR solutions, such as the new ones introduced yesterday by Acronis International GmbH.
“Many of our competitors, they support one, possibly two of those applications, but they don’t support all of the applications,” McConkie says. According to his colleague Brian Wistisen, moreover, support for data in San Francisco-based Dropbox Inc.‘s popular file sync and share solution and multiple products from small business software maker Intuit Inc., among other systems, is coming soon.
“We’re trying to build a true platform here whereby we can add additional applications going forward into the future and do so very quickly,” says Wistesen, who is StorageCraft’s director of product marketing.
StorageCraft declined to discuss pricing for its new solution except to say that it will be affordable and based on flat, per-seat rates for up to 30 GB of capacity.
“[Pricing is] going to be very aggressive, and it’s going to actually be more aggressive than the competitors out there right now,” McConkie says.
Though initially StorageCraft will house cloud-based backup data exclusively online, it plans to let users create local copies as well so they have multiple-source options when restoring large data sets or when access to the cloud is unreliable or unavailable.
“They could store that on a NAS. They could store that on an external hard drive or†on their local drive—wherever they want to do that,” McConkie says. StorageCraft will download updated backup snapshots to local storage multiple times per day, he added.
Under development for roughly the last nine months, StorageCraft Cloud to Cloud is currently undergoing real-world field tests.
“We just want to make sure that it’s totally rock solid and vetted, that we’ve done a strong beta before we release it to the market,” McConkie says.
StorageCraft plans to release the solution globally, via data centers in North America, Europe, and Australia. The company will use the S3 storage solution from Amazon Web Services to back up the backup data in its own facilities.
The release of StorageCraft Cloud to Cloud is part of a larger strategy to market the various components of StorageCraft’s product portfolio collectively as an integrated, end-to-end offering called the StorageCraft Recovery Solution. According to Curt James, StorageCraft’s vice president of marketing and business development, the company has been assembling the pieces of that solution, such as its ImageManager and ShadowControl management systems, for years.
“Eventually, we had all the pieces that we could tell a bigger, overall solution story,” he says.
Look for the StorageCraft Recovery Solution to grow even larger soon, James adds.
“You’re going to see a lot more products,” he says. “We’re going to accelerate our roadmap.”
In addition to rolling out a new cloud-to-cloud solution, StorageCraft introduced a thoroughly revamped website and new logo today. All of that activity is in keeping with the rapid pace CEO Matt Madeiros has had StorageCraft on since stepping into his current role in January in connection with a $187 million private equity funding infusion. And according to James, he’s far from done.
“You’ll see a lot more coming from StorageCraft,” he says.
