Datto has shipped its first business continuity solution for infrastructure-as-a-service environments.
Called Datto Continuity for Microsoft Azure and first previewed in March, the system is designed to help users protect data and workloads hosted in Microsoft’s vast and rapidly growing public cloud environment. Unlike solutions offering similar functionality, including Microsoft’s own Azure Site Recovery service, Datto’s offering is specifically designed for MSPs, according to Radhesh Menon, the vendor’s chief product officer.
“Everything in terms of the life cycle that you will go through is tuned for an MSP to be able to get things done in the least amount of time with the most velocity,” he says.
Users can onboard clients in just three clicks, Menon continues, and perform an initial backup within 15 minutes. Additional backups occur hourly from that point forward, ensuring that end users never exceed a 60-minute recovery point objective.
To meet stringent recovery time objectives as well, the system can recover workloads within seconds in Microsoft Azure or, if Azure is unavailable, in Datto’s own cloud. The system also comes with an automatic boot verification feature that validates backups are running as expected.
Built-in security features include the Cloud Deletion Defense technology Datto introduced for its other BDR products in March, which automatically syncs backup images to a portion of Datto’s cloud that neither legitimate administrators nor hackers can access. MSPs who need to can then restore one of those locked away images should a primary backup be deliberately or accidentally deleted.
Datto partners can manage the Azure continuity solution through the same multitenant interface they use to administer other Datto products. “It’s exactly the same experience,” Menon says, adding that Datto solicited extensive input from channel pros during the design and testing process to ensure that operating the new system is as convenient as possible for perpetually overworked MSPs.
“We spent a lot of time looking at where our partners are spending the most time and optimized those workflows,” Menon notes.
Available today in the U.S., Canada, and other English-speaking countries, with global availability to follow, Datto Continuity for Microsoft Azure is priced at per terabyte per month rates designed to be easily forecast. Unlike other cloud storage and backup services, Menon emphasizes, Datto doesn’t levy egress charges on the data it stores.
“We’ve taken that unpredictably out of the equation and given an absolutely predictable margin and price point,” he says.
Deploying Datto Continuity for Microsoft Azure positions MSPs to grab a chunk of rising commercial outlays on public cloud solutions generally and Microsoft Azure specifically, Menon continues. Indeed, global spending on public cloud services will grow 23.1% this year to $332.3 billion, according to Gartner. Microsoft, moreover, reported a 51% spike in Azure revenue during its most recently completed fiscal quarter.
For Datto, meanwhile, adding an Azure continuity solution rounds out a BDR portfolio that already includes solutions for on-premises endpoints as well as two of the world’s most popular SaaS applications, Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace. By extension, the new system offers a hook for establishing relationships with a new set of Azure-oriented partners the company has never had offerings for in the past.
Though he didn’t categorically rule out someday creating continuity solutions for other public clouds, like Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform, Menon suggested that such platforms are significantly less popular with MSPs than Azure. Fully 80% of respondents to the Global State of the MSP report Datto published in July, he notes, expect to have multiple workloads in the public cloud within three years, and 51% of those companies called Azure their cloud of choice.
Today’s news is only the latest manifestation of larger investments by Datto in cloud data protection and cloud management. The company announced plans to increase R&D spending in those areas by close to 40%, in fact, last December.
Leading Datto competitors, including N-able, are increasingly prioritizing cloud management too, even as a new crop of born-in-the-cloud administration vendors for MSPs like Augmentt and SkyKick steadily introduce cloud management systems of their own.
