Paragon’s market is the sub-100 user market, and they believe this new model is priced and simplified to become disruptive in this space.
Yudy Vinograd, Paragon’s Director of Channel Sales
Small business-focused backup and disaster recovery vendor Paragon Software Group has announced Paragon’s Protect & Restore Unified Site License, a new licensing option that the company believes will soon become its dominant licensing model, and will be disruptive within the industry.
“With this new model, we are trying to simplify the way backup and disaster recovery (BDR) can be bought and sold for the SMB,” said Yudy Vinograd, Paragon’s Director of Channel Sales. “We are early in the launch stages, but the response that we have gotten is absolutely tremendous. One hundred per cent of the people I have spoken to about this said this will truly simplify the way we sell BDR technology into the SMB space.”
Paragon’s legacy pricing model – which they still offer – charged separately for physical and virtual servers and licensed per socket, although they had previously implemented a host-based option.
“We still have the legacy models, but I believe within six months, we will see the majority of our customers purchasing our product in this manner,” Vinograd said.
This unified, host-based model is really designed for smaller businesses, Vinograd added.
“This is more in line with cloud providers, and their way of looking at the storage market, asking the customer simply ‘how much data do you have?’ he said. “ We know this might not resonate with all in the midmarket or enterprise, but SMBs, especially the S in the SMB, which is our main market, will appreciate the simplicity.”
Vinograd said there are hundreds of offerings out there, and while they can compete in the ‘check the box’ feature comparison with competitors, looking at it from that perspective doesn’t differentiate how you can truly help a customer be successful.
“We looked at the problem and thought, how can we simplify the way the customer can acquire, integrate and manage our technology,” he said. “Too many manufacturers, including us at times, get so enchanted with their technology, they can forget it is designed to empower customers and you need to make sure it really does that. We wanted to make it crazy simple for the type of customer that wants that simplicity. We weren’t going to be stuck in a legacy model based on ‘we’ve always done it like that.’ That can work if you are the market leader. But why not change the game for this type of small business customer, who we know needs this type of simplification.”
Vinograd said this model is feasible for them, because their technology supports it easily.
“It starts with having the right technology, and a single SKU that can back up everything, and provide world class dedupe at no additional cost,” he said. “Not everyone can do it with a single SKU.”
Vinograd said another plus is that it is less expensive, even given that Paragon was a little more cost competitive previously. They have four pricing tiers. Up to 10 seats has an MSRP of $USD 999, which he said gives you everything you need with all of the technology to protect and restore. Between 11-25 seats has a $USD 1899 MSP, while 26-50 seats is $USD 4499. Finally, 51-100 seats has an $8799 MSP.
Although SYNNEX, which is particularly strong in Canada, is Paragon’s distribution partner, Vinograd said their Canadian business could be stronger, and he is looking to this new model to help do that.
“In Canada, our Canadian business is viable but I haven’t had dedicated resources in Canada, although we do a lot of end user marketing and demand generation, and we have done some significant deals in Canada,” he said. “I’m expecting that this new launch will help us build a stronger Canadian presence.”
