The Acronis Backup Service complements last year’s Acronis Backup as a Service. While the latter is aimed at core cloud partners – service providers and MSPs – this new one is targeted at traditional software resellers, and lets them dip their toe in the cloud by having Acronis do most of the work.

Data protection vendor Acronis has launched Acronis Backup Service, a local and cloud backup service with bare metal recovery which, like other Acronis offerings, uses the Acronis AnyData Engine.

Acronis started out twelve years ago as a backup software vendor, and moved into the cloud last year with Acronis Backup as a Service. That product was targeted at service providers and MSPs, and included features desired by that market such as the ability to be white-labelled, and the option of using either Acronis Cloud Storage or the MSP’s own datacentre.

The new offering, Acronis Backup Service, is the same product under the hood, but is packaged and priced for a very different audience.

“Acronis Backup Service is a complementary way to use backup to the core cloud product, Acronis Backup as a Service,” said John Zanni, the SVP of cloud and hosting sales at Acronis. “The AnyData backup engine is the same. The difference is the way the backup is purchased, and that is determined by the way different channels prefer it.”

Zanni said that while Acronis Backup as a Service is optimized for service providers and MSPs who would typically bundle it with their other offerings, Acronis Backup Service is aimed at resellers who typically do not yet have a cloud business at all.

“This set of channel players want to be more transactional, to sell a prepackaged amount of backup and let the customer self-serve or manage it,” he said. “This is generally targeted at smaller companies, and is a much more simplified type of service, where most of the work is done by Acronis. We want to have consumption models that are aligned with the business models of the channel

“This will help the next generation of resellers step into the cloud, by making it very easy for them,” Zanni said. “It’s a service which is for VARs with at best a toe in the water in the cloud, for whom it is not their core business, and lets them focus their attentions on that other component.”

Acronis Backup Service backs up both physical and virtual servers and workstations in an all-in-one local and cloud backup. It offers file and disk image backup combined with system recovery, and can restore to dissimilar hardware, even VMs with bare-metal restore.

“We have been around for twelve years, and are well known as a safe and effective provider, but we also differentiate by being a one-stop shop for backup,” Zanni said. “Other providers have different backup solutions for different types of the infrastructure. We do everything with one product, because homogeneous environments are very rare.” Acronis Backup Service is exactly the same in this respect.

So why would a VAR who has likely resisted moving into the cloud because of a preference for being paid upfront rather than on an OPEX model be interested in this particular cloud product? Zanni said the market has progressed to the point where they really no longer have a choice.

“I’ve been selling SaaS for 10 years, and the big change over that 10 years is the customers are now demanding cloud,” he said. “Customers, especially small business, have embraced the cloud. In the same way that they don’t buy an email server for their email today, but use a cloud email service, backup is going in the exact same direction. The VAR’s choice today isn’t between selling backup software and selling a cloud service. It’s between selling a cloud service, or losing the customer. That’s the choice.”

Acronis Backup Service is available now.