Axcient’s new integration of its x360Recover Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery (BCDR) with ConnectWise RMM, announced in conjunction with IT Nation Secure, gives MSPs the ability to manage business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) through a single dashboard, simplifying BCDR management and providing ConnectWise Co-Managed Backup customers the choice of appliance- or cloud-based BCDR from a single vendor. MSPs who want to fully offload BCDR management can leverage the ConnectWise Co-Managed Backup service with Axcient x360Recover, supported by the ConnectWise Network Operations Center.
“Not too long ago, everyone was referring to this space as just ‘backup.’ Now it’s truly business continuity and disaster recovery. I think it’s important that everyone understand that,” says Ameer Karim, EVP and general manager, unified monitoring and management, ConnectWise. He says the managed support added to Axcient’s software can help MSPs keep up with necessities such as quarterly disaster recovery testing, which most don’t do.
Despite the growing recognition of a need for BCDR, especially due to ransomware and malware attacks, most organizations remain unprepared. According to CompTIA’s 2022 State of Cybersecurity report, just 24% of respondents from large companies (more than 500 employees) say their organization has a practice around BCDR, and only 33% of midsize and 37% of small companies (under 100 employees) have a BCDR practice.
That represents a growing opportunity for channel pros. According to Channelnomics research conducted in September 2022, the average MSP earns 26% to 30% of its gross revenue from BCDR services. One-third of MSPs generated more than 40% of their revenue from managed backup.
At the same time, MSPs who tackle BCDR are juggling a number of tools, says Rod Mathews (pictured), Axcient’s chief executive officer. His company’s October 2022 survey, conducted in collaboration with Channelnomics, showed MSPs use an average of three different BCDR solutions. One-quarter of those surveyed use four or more.
“With a lot of the consolidation that’s going on in the MSP space, they oftentimes end up with even more [BCDR solutions],” Mathews says. “So MSPs are looking for ways to consolidate that down and have some simplicity with how they have to train their people, and how they support that solution for customers.”
The new integration lets MSPs view and monitor alerts, verify backups, view automated backup validation results, manage recoveries, and respond to tickets through ConnectWise RMM, according to Axcient.
Karim says ConnectWise‘s Network Operations Center services would allow MSPs to outsource 90% of the time and costs associated with BCDR. That includes predeployment services like backup plans, agent installation, and configuration of disaster recovery strategies and processes and ongoing management.
“When you’re working within the RMM, you can now deploy the agent for the Axcient solution,” Karim says. “You can set up your backup process. It’s all easy to manage.”
Mathews says the new combined solution lets MSPs take advantage of opportunities in BCDR at a scale that fits the way they operate.
“There’s these large enterprise-oriented ROI models that say if you make this big investment, now, you’re going to save money in three years. That doesn’t fly,” Mathews says. “People want to know they’re going to save money now. When they make a change, they want to see an improvement in their margins immediately.”
