In the latest phase of an ongoing effort to help managed service providers buy its products the same way they charge clients for BDR services, the Chelmsford, Mass.-based Intronis MSP Solutions division of Barracuda Networks Inc. has released a virtual version of the MSP-oriented Barracuda Backup solution it brought to market in March.
As with the earlier hardware-based version of that product, called Barracuda Backup—Intronis MSP Edition, managed service providers pay for the new virtual version via flat monthly fees based on the volume of data they’re protecting, a pricing scheme designed to shield them from the cash flow hit associated with steep upfront payments.
Adding a virtual appliance also gives MSPs a new and more suitable option for supporting clients with heavily virtualized environments, according to Neal Bradbury, senior director of business development at Intronis MSP Solutions.
“Partners want choice,” he says. “The last thing someone wants to do is buy a piece of hardware to backup a virtual environment.”
Barracuda Backup has been available as a virtual appliance for some time, Bradbury adds. All that’s new about the system shipped today, which is available immediately in North America and Europe, are its MSP-friendly pricing model and Intronis MSP Solutions moniker.
Like the physical version of Barracuda Backup—Intronis MSP Edition, the virtual version offers integrated backup, compression, and deduplication functionality, as well as centralized online management. Being software-based, however, the new solution reduces hardware management burdens while helping end users conserve valuable floor space and lower their power and cooling costs.
The virtual appliance is more scalable than its physical cousin as well, Intronis says, so customers are unlikely to outgrow it as their data protection requirements expand.
To date, Intronis has shipped MSP editions of two Barracuda products: Barracuda Backup and, more recently, Barracuda NextGen Firewall. According to Bradbury, the initial market response to the first of those offerings has been encouraging.
“We’re beating our expectations,” he says. “The model of pay that one fee is so simple it’s resonating.”
Integrating Intronis’s centralized management console more closely with Barracuda solutions is currently a point of emphasis for the company’s developers, he adds.
“One thing that has made Intronis as popular as we are is that unified dashboard,” Bradbury states, adding that users of that dashboard will gain “single pane of glass” control over a wider range of Barracuda products in the future. Bradbury declined to provide specific guidance on when that additional functionality will become available, however.
Intronis made today’s announcement in conjunction with CompTIA’s ChannelCon 2016 conference, which continues through Wednesday in Hollywood, Fla.
