The CA spinoff, which is now free to focus on its SMB and midmarket-focused product line, is also announcing a free edition of its software, and an update of its Unified Data Protection (UDP) which adds some new features.
Christophe Bertrand, arcserve’s VP of Product Marketing
Arcserve, which became a separate company independent of CA Technologies earlier this year, has announced a significant acquisition to its product portfolio with a new Unified Data Protection (UDP) appliance which brings its Unified Data Protection technology into a new form factor. Arcserve is also announcing a free workstation edition of its software, and an update of its UDP which adds some new features.
“The appliance is the big news here,” said Christophe Bertrand, arcserve’s VP of Product Marketing. “Our UDP is a perfect shoo-in for an appliance model. It’s easy for us to do because we are a unified technology, so appliances are a natural evolution. It will provide partners with more business and give customers more options to consume the technology.”
The first appliances will come to market in early 2015. The initial ones will have 2-8 TB of capacity, and be aimed at SMBs with less than approximately 100 servers. The launch will also be limited to the U.S.
“There is an SMB focus and over time, we will roll it out to other geos and, move it upmarket with additional models,” Bertrand said. Future models with 12-50 TB capacity are planned for the midmarket for companies with up to 500 server capacity.
The appliances use arcserve’s UDP software technology and OEMd hardware, and offer built-in replication, deduplication, advanced data recovery capabilities, and wizards which provide the ease of use customers expect in an appliance.
The appliance comes only in a physical form.
“We aren’t selling a virtual appliance because that is hosted by Windows, but we are giving guidance if they want that option,” Bertrand said.
While most of arcserve’s partners have a software background, Bertrand indicated there was much demand from them for the appliance.
“This was heavily based on partner feedback,” he said. “It’s easy to deploy and easy to use so there is quick time to value.”
“Our partners tend to be legacy software partners, but many have already created their own appliances they offer to their customers, said L.D. Weller, senior director of product management at arcserve. “They really do want this.”
Arcserve is also offering, for the first time, a UDP free workstation edition for of its core product for end points protection, which uses local disk or remote share as backup targets. The ability to leverage arcserve Recovery Point Server (RPS), which includes support for deduplication, is also included on a trial basis.
“One of the things we want to do that we haven’t been able to is allow as many users as possible to experience UDP,” Bertrand said. “Once people see and try this product, it will help drive revenue.”
The free edition has the same features as the commercial product, with the caveat that the RPS support is limited to the trial period, and requires a license after that. There is community-based support for the free version.
“It will lead to a great upsell opportunity for partners,” Bertrand said. “We are in the process of finalizing marketing programs to make the market aware of this product, and are associating with channel partners in the process. We are also talking with analysts, and making sure the website has content and deliverables for it.”
Finally, the arcserve UDP Update adds new features and hypervisor capabilities. These include granular recovery capabilities for key Windows-based applications such as Microsoft Exchange, SQL, SharePoint and Oracle, and new capabilities for Hyper-V and VMware infrastructures.
“From a strategy standpoint we will keep adding capabilities,” Bertrand said. “We want to provide end users with the same type of data protection capabilities across all hypervisors.
Bertrand also indicated the software enhancements has made over improvements to management capabilities which he said customers will find meaningful.
Bertrand emphasized that new offerings like the appliance and the freemium edition are something that arcserve is now able to do as an independent company, which would have been stymied before.
“We are executing on a vision,” he said. “When we were part of CA, our business was not always optimized to deploy products and systems that can best support our partners, which is critical since we are 100 per cent channel. Now we have the freedom to do what we need to do, to build a better apparatus around supporting the business. We have excitement around being able to grow the business the way we want to do and not have obstacles to our strategy, which happened a few times under CA.”
The arcserve UDP Update 2 and the free workstation edition will be available in late November 2014. The appliance is scheduled to be available in early 2015.
