Five Key Considerations for Backup & Recovery
Part of the problem with backup and recovery is that as a task it’s generally something that doesn’t come naturally to the average end user. They’re not inclined to do it very often, preferring instead to rely on IT administrators who have a few thousand other things to do as well. As a result, IT administrators don’t get around to backing things up as often as they should either.
Acronis CEO Serguei Beloussov sees a lot of room for improvement in the form of the consumerization of backup and recovery. Since returning to take the helm of Acronis, the company has invested $10 million in a research and development facility dedicated to data protection, while at the same rolling out enhanced versions of its backup and recovery software for small-to-medium size businesses (SMB) that now supports Microsoft Active Directory, and a version of its file synchronization software that now includes a policy engine.
Beloussov says Acronis is now leveraging a lot of the investments it made in the usability of its consumer-grade products in its business software. Previously, the company’s different divisions tended to operate so independently that Beloussov says Acronis was not benefiting fully from all the investments it was making.
As the cloud becomes a bigger part of the backup and recovery landscape, Beloussov says the next step is to apply more automation to the recovery process. It’s not enough to back up files into the cloud; providers of cloud backup services need to provide speedy recovery capabilities that also take into account what files need to be recovered first in order to get a business up and running again.
In the future, Beloussov says Acronis will also expand its ability to support both Apple Macintosh systems alongside Windows. In the meantime, Beloussov says Acronis will be employing software-defined storage technologies across dissimilar systems to drive greater consumerization of the backup and recovery process.
